The Song of the Siren
by Cebaje
Summary: How long can we survive if we deny who we truly are? This is a story of duty and desire, of fate and chance, of magic and humanity. Even the darkest among us have some light to give, whether we know it or not. LMxOC, with appearances by Snape, Voldemort, Harry Potter and friends. 1000% AU, updated rewrite. M for naughty bits and violence. Year 6, non-canon after GOF.
1. Prologue

Hello all!

This is an updated rewrite of a story I wrote in 2003(!). **It is completely AU and only canon-compliant up to GOF.**

 **Warnings** include a large age gap (16 to Lucius Malfoy's late 30's), violence, underage sex, an INCREDIBLE amount of fluff, and a strong divergence from canon, post book 4. (OOTP, HBP and DH had not yet been published at the original onset of this story, so there was no knowledge or mention of the Deathly Hallows, no death of Dumbledore, etc.)

While you will encounter plenty of canon favorites in this story, it does tend to skew more Harry Potter _inspired_ than your average fanfic. The first few chapters are entirely OC centric, with a few familiar references hither and thither. Canon characters enter with abandon around chapter 11.

I hope you enjoy reading this story as much as I enjoyed writing it! I adore every comment or criticism that you feel inclined to give.

xoxo

Cebaje

. . . . .

Even with the blindfold on, she could feel the crowd pressing in around her. The ring of human detritus hovered in silent orbit, blocking the light of the fires and torches. Though the floor beneath her feet had long since hemorrhaged any memory of warmth, it was not the chill that made her skin ripple with gooseflesh, but the knowledge that somewhere within the circle of black-robed satellites he stood, watching behind a faceless mask.

After a few moments, the little sounds of scraping heels and rustling fabric stilled, and a darker breed of quiet descended. Approaching footsteps beat an arrhythmic metronome against the stone, just loud enough to drown out the sudden hammering of her heart.

Hands fell against her shoulders, fingers dug into the thin fabric of her snow-colored robe. A sob of recognition stole the breath from her lungs, but she disguised the fierce black joy as a cry of pain, though the familiar touch was far gentler than she knew it could be. He pushed her forward several steps, then nudged the back of her legs so that she buckled to her knees.

The protest died in her mouth as she felt the warmth of his presence recede, and only then did she begin to tremble.

To her left the footsteps resumed, followed by a dry, slithery sound she had not noticed before. Something cool and slick, shivering with incredible kinetic power, brushed against her thigh. This time, she could not stifle the thin little scream that split her lips in a gasping rictus of horror. _The snake,_ she thought. A murmuring tide of laughter crested in a hateful wave before subsiding into silence again.

"Icarus did not lie," came the voice, dry and cold as the scales still running the length of her leg. "Perfection."

She stiffened at the sound of her father's name, but at least now she had a direction in which to turn her focus. An icy finger touched her chin and bid her to lift her face to the sky.

"Nothing else would suit you, my Lord."

She turned towards his voice before she had a chance to blunt the swiftness of her response. Lucius Malfoy flinched beneath his mask when he saw the Dark Lord's jaw twitch.

"Remove her robes, Lucius."

Voldemort watched in impassive silence as Lucius stepped forward. He lifted the curtain of raven-blue hair and untied the simple white sheath, gloved hands brushing her skin as he pushed the fabric down her shoulders and allowed it to gather in an ivory puddle around her knees. She swallowed the ember of terror rising in her throat and instinctively wrapped her arms around herself, cheeks blazing with shame.

Lord Voldemort's mirthful chuckle preceded the sting of magic in her wrists, which were suddenly locked and drawn above her head. She wanted so badly to be brave, but there was no greater humiliation than this, baring her flesh to this roomful of strangers, this creature wearing the skin of a man. She gasped at the pressure of a boot-heel driving against the small of her back, forcing her to arch into the solid mass of the body in front of her.

"Oh," came a voice from the circle, a deep male tenor laced with desire. Voldemort hissed an unintelligible spell, and she hear the unmistakable crack of several bones breaking at once, following by a low, keening wail.

"Mine," said the dark lord. He reached down and threaded his skeletal fingers through her hair, wrenching her head back, exposing her throat and driving her spine even harder into the heel that held her in place.

"Is she worthy, Lucius? She has proven herself loyal, bringing the boy with a whisper and a smile. But does she deserve a place in my bed?"

The hand in her hair tightened and was joined by another, this one tracing a path between her breasts, down her belly. The pressure against her spine faltered as Lord Voldemort slid two fingers inside the warm, wet channel between her thighs. Fear made this sudden, ruthless invasion all the more painful than it would have been, even considering the reparative spells that Lucius had cast to restore the appearance of virginity.

She lost it, and began crying in great, ripping heaves. Not just for the agonizing thrust of his fingers inside her, but for the treasonous pleasure ignited by the unwelcome touch. She hated herself in that moment, hated the sea and the moon and the man that had made her, hated the treachery of her body and the inhuman blood beneath the skin that flushed and shuddered in response.

But he could not bring her there, to that place that only one had brought her. She would not – _could not_ allow it. She snapped her tongue between her teeth until the copper salt of blood filled her mouth, using the pain as an anchor to tether herself to the humanity that rose up against her Faery nature.

It was this rebellion that was her undoing, for it broke the spell she did not know she had cast. Lord Voldemort had been in very real danger of forgetting the truths he had been told, the secrets brought to him not an hour before this meeting commenced. Even he was not immune to the power of a Siren – had not been, until he felt the cold rejection of a body promised to be willing, _no matter what._

He withdrew his hand and released the spell that held her hands above her head, and stepped away.

"Lucius," he said. "Finish it."

The boot left her back and she dissolved into a heap at his feet, her forehead flush against the stone and her body wracked with sobs.

Lucius hesitated. Something was badly, horribly wrong.

"My Lord?"

"Finish it," he said again, nudging the girl with his foot. She started and stilled in a breath, rising up on her elbows.

"I could _never,"_ said Lucius. "I could never touch something that belongs so wholly to you."

"Try," said Voldemort, his voice lower, silky, fraught with threat.

Lucius' arm came around her and lifted her up, pulled her so that she sat on his lap, her legs outflung, the scrap of her gown riding mercifully between her knees. His chest was warm against her back, his breath came in harsh hot bursts, stirring her unbound hair. A barely-suppressed tremble of rage shivered over his muscles.

"Take that silly bauble off," said the Dark Lord. "I want you to feel her as I did."

A tiny metallic _snap_ caught her ears, and the jealous anger emanating from his body became something else, something she knew, a soft, familiar tenderness. He must have removed his gloves, for it was with bare hands now that he traced the line of her ribs, skimmed the flare of her hips, brushed against the hot peak of desire at her center. He legs fell open willingly, eagerly, and she forgot the danger and the audience and the doom that her submission would bring. She rocked against the motion of his hand, urging him to continue, delighting in the guttural moan that warmed her neck.

He found his way inside her gently, a curled finger stroking the place just _there,_ a movement and a motion that only someone intimately familiar with her body would know. She gasped and dug her nails into his black-clad thigh, mouth upturned and teeth bared to graze against the stubble at his jawline.

It was over in moments, it was over too soon, it was over. She thudded back into her body with a grimace, feeling the dampness of sweat on her skin, the cool air replacing the heat of his hand. Her chin dropped to her chest as she was struck with the realization of what he had done, how she had responded.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, the first words she'd spoken since this ordeal began. She felt Lucius' heavy, shuddering sigh behind her. Voldemort tsked above them.

"You fucked her, " Voldemort said. Iphany's stomach dropped as though she'd fallen from a broom. Lucius rushed to respond, stumbling fatally over his words.

"No, your greatness. I would never...I...I knew she was saved for you." He scrambled up, depositing her on the floor in the process, moving swiftly in front of the Dark Lord.

"How many times?"

"I swear to you, my Lord, I did not – "

She heard a scuffle and a shout as someone pulled Lucius back, and someone else reached for her and untied her blindfold. She barely had time to register her surroundings – ancient stone and ceilings so high she could not fathom their end, the faint glimmer of firelight on white masks. Lucius had been stripped of his and driven to his knees next to her, held by two other pale faced Death Eaters.

"I don't believe you." Voldemort rounded on her, and for the first time she looked on him fully. She covered her face with her hands to hide the revulsion and shame.

"You lied to me. You knew she was mine, Lucius. I did not think I had to tell you not to take her." The poison of his words made her feel dizzy and sick; she sank down hard on her heels to keep from tipping over. Beside her, Lucius moaned softly, sagging in his captors' hands.

"I'm...I'm sorry my Lord. I removed the necklace once...and I touched her...and...I could not..."

"I know, Lucius. You are weak. You could not help it. That is why I am going to spare you. Let him up." Voldemort replied, his voice surprisingly light and consoling. She peered through her fingers, watching as the Death Eaters obeyed. Lucius rose to his feet.

 _He lasted a sight longer than you did,_ she thought. Voldemort's eyes snapped towards her, as though he could read her thoughts. He grinned, showing a row of jagged, sharp teeth.

"Thank you, my Lord. You are most gracious." Lucius replied, bowing again and again as he turned to make his way back to his place in the circle. Voldemort stopped him before he could rejoin the ranks.

"Wait, Lucius. She must be punished, don't you think? Denying her master, seducing her caregiver. Unforgivable sins, no?"

"Of course," Lucius replied, bereft of tone or feeling. The callousness of his response made her throat constrict with unshed tears. She turned to look at him, dropping her hands, eyes wide and imploring. He could not match her gaze.

"Death is appropriate, isn't it? I'd torment her, first, and make you watch...but your past loyalties are no small matter. I would spare you seeing your little plaything's blood paint the walls."

"My Lord, if I may be allowed to say...I think..." He trailed off, unable to finish at the sight of Voldemort's glare. A thin smile crawled across the Dark Lord's fleshless lips, and he sheathed his own wand.

"You do it, Lucius."

"My Lord, I-"

"Do it, or I'll kill both of you."

She shut her eyes when Lucius reached for his wand. He would not chose her over his own life, but perhaps it was more than that. Perhaps he wished to do her this mercy, and himself. He took his place in front of her, back to Voldemort.

"Look at him, Iphany." The Dark Lord commanded. She shuddered and opened her eyes to Lucius' face, cold and emotionless as he raised his wand. But as he steadied himself, his gaze dropped to meet hers, and she saw the shine of tears in his eyes.

'I'm sorry," He mouthed, repeating her own words back to her. A soft smile touched her face; sunlight breaking through a storm cloud. She nodded.

"Now, Lucius." Voldemort commanded. Lucius drew in a deep breath.

"Avada..."


	2. History

Sirens and Humans have always been distrustful of each other. You knew this before Homer wrote his false tales of half-harpy she-devils luring blameless sailors to a bloody fate against the rocky coast. You knew it before bards sang tales of beautiful women who waited on the shore to drag men to a watery grave. You knew it before the modern world swallowed the old one, and such tales were dragged up out of time to be repackaged and paraded as children's stories, as a derogatory and laughable name for beautiful human women. There are plenty of beliefs surrounding the habits of the Sea-Fey, and all lay every ounce of malice and blame on the Siren.

The truth paints a far different picture, one not so flattering to the singers and storytellers. There are no accounts of lustful men happening upon a coven of moon-bathing Sirens, chasing the slowest to exhaustion, and then taking what he wished from his hard-won prize. And fewer still are the tales of mutual passion, since it always ended with the Siren returning to the sea and her hapless lover drowning himself in an effort to find her again. The revenge of the unwilling always brought justice to the crime against her, and it was from this that humans took their tales of death and violence, for once a man has taken a Siren, he cannot eat or sleep until he has touched her again. Family and friends alike must watch him pine the weeks away as he takes solace only in the light of the moon and the sound of the ocean.

Finally, his longing overtakes him and he must return to the sea where he found her. This time, she is waiting, standing half-submerged in the water, smiling openly and beckoning with outstretched arms.

He wades further and further into the ocean, reaching, always reaching for her, until he is sucked down into the undercurrent and never seen or heard from again.

It was one of these incidents that sparked the human's attempted extermination of the Sirens. Loe MacAullen, son to the laird of Shallycob Island, disappeared without a breath of explanation one summer evening. The weeks prior to his vanishing had been filled with talk of his love for a particular Siren often sighted bathing in Clingman's Cove. When Loe's clothing washed up on shore a month later, Laird MacAullen was nine shade of furious. He called for a war against the Sirens, and for a time the bounty fetched for Siren scalp, eyes and hide was enough to make a poor man rich beyond his humblest expectations.

It took six months, but at the end of this time, not a single Siren could be found on the shores of Shallycob. The people declared victory, and they celebrated by burning skin and eyes and hair in a great bonfire at the mouth of Clingman's Cove.

The smell, which should have been unpleasant, sang faintly of sea-lily and starlight. With their faces burned hot by the fire and great triumphant joy in their voices, the people of Shallycob chanted and danced long into the night.

But the Sirens were not extinct. A tiny coven of them, less than a dozen, watched in mute horror as mutilated bits of their sisters floated, ash-light, into the damp summer air.

"We must fight back," whispered Ilia, who at three years shy of a century was counted as the least wise amongst those that remained.

"They outnumber us by the thousands. Would you have all chance of our survival destroyed?" replied her eldest sister, Renali. She winced as the humans flung another sack of blue-black hair onto the pyre.

"No more blood will be shed this night. You know we need them. All but the three ancients have a trace of human blood in their veins. We cannot procreate without them."

Renali was silent for many long moments, and in this time she gathered her youngest sister close. When she spoke again, little Ilia felt a tremble of destiny settle in her chest.

"One day, you will leave the sea and take a human husband. He will give you a daughter, the first of our kind to be born earth-bound. She will know the ways of men, but the song of our losses will ring as freshly in her ears as it does in yours tonight. She will give us our revenge when she delivers unto us the most powerful of all human men," said Renali. "Otilde has foreseen it."

Ilia nodded, knowing better than to argue with the Siren Queen. The idea of taking a husband – one of _them –_ was so abhorrent that she did not trust herself to speak in response. Renali took her silence as assent and pulled away to regard her face in the darkness.

"Until then, we shall sing softly and swim quietly. No harm will come to us, for the moon and the sea will keep us well hidden. Do not be afraid."

And so with final wistful glances thrown towards the orange glow on the shore, the last ten Sirens slipped beneath the waves, unseen and forgotten until Icarus Novara decided to take a stroll along the shore of Clingman's Cove.


	3. Beginnings

The Novara Estate was built on Clingman's Cove a hundred years after the last Siren was seen in Shallycob. Admetus Novara came from the mainland in search of solitude and silence for the twilight of his years. Admetus found the Hebridean island charming, just isolated enough to provide peace and quiet. The manor he built was an artistic achievement of stone and mortar, and it became the center of Shallycob's tourism draw. Admetus spent his last ten years in the house on Clingman's Cove, and upon his death ownership of the manor passed to his eldest son, Mortimer.

The house changed hands in this way for another century, and during this time fewer and fewer of Shallycob's citizens flocked to marvel at the house on the cove. The Novaras were a dark, secretive bunch - anyone happening near the mansion at night would return spinning fibs about magic and wizards. The townspeople inevitably named the reporter a raving lunatic, but none the less, the Novaras were not a well received family.

Icarus inherited the estate at twenty, just two years after his graduation from Hogwarts. He was a tall, stately man, handsome in the way that serious men are handsome, and through skill and connections secured himself commendable position as an Auror for the Scottish force. By day he reported to the Ministry of Magic, orchestrating raids and routing out Lord Voldemort's "supporters." By night he donned his Death Eater robes and delivered his friends and coworkers into the hands of the enemy.

Then came the defeat, the tragedy that plunged all Death Eaters into hiding or prison. Icarus came to trial and escaped by association, calling on the defense of his recently acquitted comrade, Lucius Malfoy. It was then that he relocated to the family home in Shallycob, drawing on an impressive family treasury to avoid rejoining the larger wizarding world.

He was alone, but not lonely, for loneliness is a feeling only the good can experience. He was passively content to bide time until the Dark Lord's imminent return, keeping contact with his former fellows and watching his Mark for a summons that never came.

Meanwhile, he spent his days in the estate, attended by a fleet of house Elves. He read and studied, whiling his months away in Shallycob until his reputation dwindled from infamy to obscurity.

One evening, as dusk meandered in from the west, Icarus decided to wander the sandy shore flanking Clingman's Cove. The water here was glass-smooth and still, so clear that he could see small pebbles lining the seabed. The first stars stippled the horizon with cold white fire, a rare sight in the usually cloud-covered sky.

When the moon made his debut, Icarus sat mesmerized by the sight of the flat opal disc mirrored in the water. He was surprised that he had never really noticed how lovely the cove was at night, scored by the ancient rhythm of the ocean in the distance. He glanced down at the water again, expecting to catch a glimpse of his own reflection. What he saw instead elicited an unmanly screech and a frantic scrambling for the shore.

The face grinning up at him was not his own.

The woman rose out of the water, staring him down with eyes that shone incongruously bright in the darkness. Her hair was blue-black, plaited and parted over her white shoulders, threaded with tiny shells and pearls. She smiled, and Icarus sat down in the sand with a bone-rattling thud.

Had he spent any length of time in Shallycob's main streets, he would have identified the strange woman in an instant. Paintings of Sirens decorated every restaurant and shop in town, and businesses sported names like "The Siren-Song" and "The Ocean Witch". But being a wizard he had little use for the Muggle village, and being a pureblood he had even less use for those that inhabited it.

As it were, Icarus could not fathom a reason as to why a creature of such breathtaking beauty would be lolling about at the bottom of an ocean-fed pond.

Suspicion seized him for a moment as the girl drew closer. He started skittishly, heels digging into the damp sand beneath him. She reached behind her neck and unfastened a slim silver chain bearing a blue gem shaped like a crescent moon.

"I belong to you." She whispered in the wind's voice, breathy and warm. The sound of her words alone drew Icarus in and held him fast, and suddenly he could think nothing but 'mine,' and 'now.' He opened his hand to an unfamiliar weight, the crescent on the silver chain nestled in his palm. The edges blurred with an indigo glow.

"Who are you?" He breathed.

"Ilia," She replied, reaching for his hand. He laid his palm in hers and gasped at the surge of heat that passed from her skin, his vision going momentarily gray as she pulled him up to stand.

"You're going to marry me," Icarus said. Ilia laughed and nodded, and Icarus stumbled backwards, knocked senseless by the music of her voice. She worked herself under his arm, and when he had recovered, they took the path from the cove together towards the warmth of the house on the hill.

Far out in the surf, hidden by the crashing waves, three Sirens smiled as the man led their sister away.

Ilia the Siren became Ilia Novara a week later at a sunset ceremony on Clingman's Cove. Witnesses were few, a handful of Icarus' friends watching in mild shock as he wed a woman so lovely that to look at her too long brought tears to the eyes.

It was the first and last time anyone saw Ilia. Once the wedding was over, Icarus guarded her as jealously as a secret. The villagers grew even more distrusting, for the man who had recently only been seen in the evening, alone in the courtyard or on the balcony could now be spotted in the company of a raven-haired beauty that resembled the paintings and statues in the town-square with an unsettling likeness. Sometimes she would sing to him, and the sound of her voice drifted over the village and drove grown men into the streets until angry wives dragged them back in by their shirt collars.

Everything seemed to be progressing exactly as Ilia and her sisters had foreseen, until the night she brought her daughter Iphany into the world.


	4. Grief

"Master Novara! Master Novara!"

Icarus glared blearily up from the bottle of brandy, directing a half-eyed squint at the ugly House Elf screeching into his parlor. The stupid creature (Blat? Splat? He couldn't remember) wore a misshapen shift that was usually dirty, but never streaked with red. Panic pounded through the haze of drunkenness, propelling him to stand.

"Master Novara, please come quickly! Miss Ilia is not well, she is giving the baby and now she cries for the pain, Master! I think she is dying!" Blat burst into tears and covered her face with grimy hands.

Icarus was out of the chair like a shot, scrambling down the hall to the birth-room. As he passed, each torch on the wall sputtered and lit, following his procession and casting deep gray shadows in his wake.

The door flew open and he was immediately struck with the rich, sick smell of death. Icarus brought a trembling hand to his mouth and covered his nose.

Though the hallway was dark and shadowed, in here the fire blazed and the stars poured in through the skylight. The glow threw Ilia's sprawled form on the narrow bed into sharp relief, traced her sweat soaked limbs and face. Another House Elf stood by the bed, clutching a wriggling bundle in her tiny, spindly arms.

"Icarus," Ilia whispered. He drew near and knelt by the bed, averting horrified eyes from the sight of the still growing patch of scarlet that gathered between her legs.

"Oh, Ilia. You...you're going to be fine." Icarus stammered, taking his wife's hand and clutching it to his chest. Ilia winced and arched weakly as another dark sticky current of blood discharged from her battered womb.

"Icarus. Take care of Iphany," Ilia sighed, turning her pale face her husband's. Tears burned the corners of Icarus' eyes. Even in the moments before death, she was still unbearably beautiful.

"You're not dying," Icarus replied, this time in the stern and inarguable tone he used with disobedient servants. Ilia smiled softly, and used what was left of her strength to lay a hand on his cheek. Against every grudge and memory of vengeance ingrained in her soul, Ilia had fallen in love. She had not meant to; in doing so she had forsaken her sisters, forgetting the common peril that bound them in sorrow and revenge. She should have given birth in the sea, as had all of her sisters before her, but shame kept her locked inside the house as her time came, stepping out only long enough to take her nightly swim in the cove. Her body was not meant to bear a child as humans did, but stubbornness convinced her to ignore the unnatural pain, the nightmares of her own death, the visions of her daughter growing up alone in the shadow of her father's lost love. Poor little Iphany - she would never fully understand, she would not...

"Tell her who she is," Ilia whispered, her hand constricting feebly around her husband's. She took a breath, let it out, hitched another, and did not move again. The pupils in her watery green eyes grew until they eclipsed the color within. Her eyes fluttered, then closed.

A great gaping emptiness roared inside Icarus' chest, and he emitted a dry, choking sob. His love for Ilia had been his only softening, and as she slumped lifelessly in his arms, she took with her every ounce of decency and compassion that he had left in his heart.


	5. Interlude

"She's gone."

A mournful whisper rippled across the trio of Sirens hovering near the thorough-way to Clingman's Cove. The moon was new, which meant they should have been asleep beneath the coral grove on the other side of the island. Instead they were huddled, handfast, struck dumb and helpless.

"She was our last hope for revenge." whispered Renali. She released the hands that kept her circle-bound and glided forward towards the stiller waters of the cove.

"Do not despair yet. The child lives, and it is she that I see in my dreams of justice. She is the one who will save us," replied Otilde. She, Renali, and Alba were the last Sirens left in the world, the first daughters of the Moon Lord and the Lady of the Ocean. Their immortality depended on the continuation of the Siren race, and without Ilia to instruct her earth-bound daughter, they would submit to the fate they had been promised; age and demise, the transformation from creatures of an ancient world into legend. They would never receive the redemption they deserved. They would become the sum of the stories and lies that destroyed them.

"We cannot let that come to pass," Alba said, for her sister's thoughts bloomed warm and fluid in her own mind. Renali whirled back to regard them, her face contorted in paroxysm of beautiful rage.

"We must go to her," she said. "That man cannot raise a daughter of the moon and sea. . If he does not die from grief, he will be destroyed from within and become a monster. She will not-"

"No," Otidle cut in, snatching her sister's hand. Renali's eyes flashed a terrifying fire in the darkness, and Otilde could feel her sister's indignant rage. "That is not her path. You have trusted my vision this long, can't you-"

"Then you knew Ilia would die?" Renali seethed, wrenching her hand free. "If you say yes, you are a murderer, and if you say no, your visions are worthless."

Otilde was silent for a long time, her attention caught by the yellow eyes of the house lights on the hill. One by one they extinguished, the last being the flickering torchlight of the tower where Ilia's empty body lay.

From the dark house there came a long, keening cry, rising in pitch and tone, spitting the silent evening until it filled every crevice of the cove, sounding and resounding in a sorrowful crescendo. Alba covered her ears and slid beneath the waves, unable to bear the weight of the man's grief.

As the wailing continued, Otilde began to speak, so softly that Renali was forced to lean in to hear her.

"Our Lord and Lady gave each of us our own gifts," she said. "I do not claim to know every path that can be taken. I can only see what they have given me permission to see, and I only know what they wish for me to know. For now, we must wait. Ilia was of my own line, so she possessed a fragment of the gift I was given. If she chose to stay, knowing she would not survive, then she must have known something we did not."

She slid closer to Renali, draping her arms around her sister's lean white shoulders.

"We must trust our mother and father. We must trust our sister. We must trust ourselves, and we must trust the child. She will know who she is; even if the man does not tell her, though I believe that he will. He will not be able to help but love her, even if he cannot allow his heart the luxury of caring. Her nature will guide her, she will learn to sing with her first moon cycle, and we can speak to her then in a way she will understand. You must believe me, Renali. This is the way."

Sometime during her speech, Alba resurfaced. She was the kindest among them, the quickest to love, the quickest to believe. Otilde felt warm fingers lace through her own; first Alba's, then, reluctantly, Renali's. Her regal face was composed and still, the line of her full, rosy lips set in resignation.

But Otilde saw the hope there, too. She felt it kindle in her own heart, felt it breathing in the dangerous wild pulse of their ocean mother, the hidden black face of their moon-lord sire. Hope was all they had, all they needed. For now.

One by one, the Sirens looked to the moonless sky. Starlight slivered the perfect features, coaxing first one, and then another, until finally the trio lifted their voices to the night, rising above the shriek of grief from the house on the hill.

You have heard this song before, in the moment preceding a thunderstorm, or the instant between sleep and dreaming. It rings beneath the sound of lovemaking and traces through tears of sorrow and joy. It is sweet and sustained, it is bitter and unkind. But once the storm is over, and the dreams end, and lovers part or sadness fades – the song remains.

That night, the wistful denizens of Shallycob kept their windows open and let the strangely musical breeze dance unheeded inside their houses. Children slept soundly, with dreamless abandon, husbands professed love with an ardor that had lain dormant for years.

Every window was open, and every man knew peace.

Every man except Icarus Novara.


	6. Ignite

The house elves were replaced by a nanny not long after her birth, when it became clear that despite their blind devotion, the diminutive creatures had no idea how to properly care for a human (or, half-human) child. Icarus hired a wet nurse from Stornoway, a girl out of a newer Pureblooded family who had lost her own child to the Sleeping Sickness. Still shattered from the death of her son, Helena took the strange and beautiful newborn to her breast without hesitation, half-listening when the girl's father explained the circumstances of her birth. He placed a Secrecy gag on her, so that any time she was asked about the nature of her employment, she began reciting lines from Yeats in a clipped, brisk tone.

Over the years, Icarus' involvement in Iphany's life was as scant as possible. He was not there when she sat up for the first time, or took her first step, or spoke her first word. Instead he was often on the mainland, rebuilding himself as an affable member of the wizarding world. He assumed a mid-level position at the Ministry, reasoning that his long absence and his reputation would require repair before assuming a higher consideration. People seemed to know better than to ask about his widowing, and even fewer had any knowledge of the fact that he had a child. He would visit her now and again, but with every passing year she looked more and more like her flawless mother and he could not bear the sight of her face.

When he was home, he was shut up in his study. Sometimes Iphany could hear voices from within, low and dangerous and intriguing. She was never allowed inside when Father had guests. But she yearned to see other people, and would sometimes stand outside the door for hours on end, listening to the human hum of conversation. Once or twice she fell asleep out in the hall, with her face still pressed against the door. The second time was the last; every time thereafter when she felt the urge to sneak her way back down, she remembered the ache in her backside and thought better of the endeavor.

Helena discouraged the child from calling her "Mother," as much as it pained her to do so. She grew as any child would, though there were certain milestones she reached that other children did not. At three, she complained of an itching behind her ears, and Helena parted the wispy black curls to find a row of tiny gills.

And there were some secrets she never shared with Helena. Like how she felt at midnight on a full moon evening, when sky was seared from horizon to horizon with a multitude of stars, or the music that spun inside her head whenever she walked by the ocean. She bathed nightly in the cove, a necessary evil that, when neglected, resulted in lethargy and illness. The word Siren was in her mind before she knew how to think. She asked her father once what it meant, when he was home for longer than a moment and still enough for her to speak to him.

It was the first and last time Iphany ever heard him speak of her mother. He told her that she, in fact, was a Siren, and that she possessed more latent power in her eyes than most grown witches did in their entire schooled bodies. She learned that one day she would grow to be beautiful beyond comprehension, that her voice could lure and curse in an instant, that the touch of her fingers could bring a man to tears.

He must have been drunk, or feeling particularly pleasant, because that evening he also showed her the amulet her mother had given him on the first day they met. Icarus told her that the gem protected him from the full force of her mother's touch, but would not elaborate on its origin.

Iphany often wondered if she was the last Siren left in the world, for she got hold of a few books from Shallycob that spoke of the mass murder of hundreds of Sirens in the eighteenth century. This was a lonesome thought, and she tried not to give it much consideration.

Iphany's life itself was lonesome, but she knew nothing else. She spent her childhood much as her father had his own adult life; flitting from room to room, learning every carving and crevice of the Novara estate. Helena came around less and less as she grew, and then one day she did not come at all. The house elves resumed again the daily tasks of caring for her, bringing her new books, preparing her meals and mending her clothing. Some nights she would climb from her window to the sound of Blat's pleading cries and sit on the roof to watch the snap and gleam of the lights from Shallycob, seized with both longing and inexplicable rage.

Until, one evening, not long after her eleventh birthday, she did not have to wonder any more.

She had been feeling quite odd the entire afternoon, and skipped dinner to wade early in the cove. The sun was just touching the wide blue mouth of the ocean when it began - a soft tickle in the back of her throat. The feeling persisted as she slid into the deeper water, spreading both down into her chest and up through to her tongue and teeth. The promise of a full moon whispered at the edge of the place where the sea met the sky. It filled her with peculiar giddiness.

The last few months had been newly exciting. When she turned eleven, Icarus hired a tutor and ordered that she begin her instruction in the art of magic. The tutor was a bright young woman with none of the pallor and melancholy that Helena had worn, bearing stacks of books and parchment, glass vials of amber liquid and small black stones. She brought Iphany very own wand, fashioned from the yew tree in their back garden and cored with a single strand of her dead mother's hair.

She taught Iphany how to turn flowers into heart shaped fans, how to brew a potion that would remove warts, and how to grow a fern that produced a repellant to keep banshees at bay. So abundant was Iphany's progress that Angie found herself consulting her lesson plan for second year students just six weeks after she began teaching. Earlier that day they had brewed a particularly difficult concoction meant to rid Iphany of a nasty headache. It had been quite successful, but now Iphany wished they had mixed something for her scratchy throat, too. She turned over in the water and sucked in a mouthful of brine, humming the cool, salty liquid through the gills behind her ears. The tonal buzz of the hum felt good – felt like it was easing the tickle in her throat and chest. She did it again, a little louder, flipping again to her back to open her mouth to the sky.

The sun sank, the moon popped into full view over the water, and Iphany began to sing. The itch in her throat was gone, replaced by a liquid warmth that slid through her body and lit pleasantly in the center of her belly. She was filled with a sharp golden glow that bubbled and gasped from her lips in a song she was certain she had never heard before excluding the deep green dark of her dreams.

The water was velvet, stroking across her gangly limbs, she felt languid and luxurious as she sifted across the cove, trailing the glassy surface with her fingers.

She did not know how long it took for her to realize that she was not singing alone anymore. With a gradual awakening of her subconscious, she noticed that there was harmony to her high notes, a perfect blend gliding beneath the wordless tune. She turned to the mouth of the cove and saw the three Sirens, their sleek dark heads bobbing just above the water. Her eyebrows shot up and she tried to stop singing so ask to ask them who, what they were, but her voice refused to cooperate. The three strange women each smiled in turn as she glided closer to them. Iphany's high, sopranic voice was as pure and pristine as winter, and so clear that it floated easily across the water, over the hill and into the house.

One of the Sirens approached her and held out a hand.

"IPHANY!" came her father's voice, shattering the spell and filling her with an abrupt, implacable fear. The Sirens froze, cast horrified glances at one another, and disappeared beneath the waves.

But their presence was not the reason Icarus screamed, for he in truth could not see so far, and had only heard the sound of Iphany's voice drifting across the dunes. It was a melody so familiar that it cracked the old, scabbed pain of losing Ilia so many years before. Iphany barely had time to react as her father reached inside his robes, unsheathed his wand and said something she could hardly hear, something like -

"Crucio!"

Pain ignited in her muscles and bones, shattered the exotic pleasure of her song.

Iphany screamed and screamed and screamed, and only when her voice broke and rasped to silence did the torment abate. She struggled to the shore in a thin red haze and used what strength remained to heave her naked, shaking body to the sand, where she collapsed with a shudder and tried to fathom why her father would do this terrible thing. His shadow fell across her prostrate body and she flinched, arms wrapped protectively around her aching skin. He was muttering darkly to himself, words she could not hear, though their meaning sparked wild and unhinged in the corners of her mind. The heavy silk of his cloak flopped across her body, and he gathered her up in his arms, face turned away from her whimpering cries. He carried her across the hill and into the house, still whispering, brought her up to her room, deposited her on the bed, and left her for the house elves to attend.

Iphany's first coherent though was one of awful betrayal. She shivered beneath the down comforter, tears streaking her face and pooling beneath her cheek to stain the pillow. She knew that the Sirens she had seen were her kin. They had looked upon her so kindly and beckoned her with hands that would stroke and soothe instead of strike. She'd felt wanted in that single, shining instant.

And the feeling of singing - she reflected on it now and had no name for the bliss beneath the moonlight, but knew that it was a thing she could no longer live without. But it was the singing itself that so incensed her father. If the Sirens had known her song and her mother was one of them, that meant that at some point he must have heard her mother sing the same tune. Was the memory of her death still so fresh after all these years? She shuddered to think of what he would do if he caught her singing again, but she simply could not imagine a night without it after this first taste of peace.

Giving voice to a pained sigh that rattled her still-sore ribs, Iphany drifted, shakily, into a spare, troubled sleep.

And for the first time, she dreamed of her mother.


	7. Vision

"Iphany."

The silky voice curled around Iphany's ears, drawing her up into the walls of the dream. The woman in the chair next to her bed wore her sad smile like an ill-fitting robe; the expression too dim to reach her wide green eyes.

"Mother?" Iphany rose to her elbows, pleasantly surprised to find that all traces of pain had vanished. Ilia nodded and reached out a hand to stroke her daughter's finely sculpted cheekbone, the pads of her fingers bridging over shell thin eyelids and pursed, trembling lips.

"Is this a dream?" Iphany asked.

"Yes. But don't discount it so quickly, for I have many important things to tell you." Ilia replied, sliding to sit on the bed with her child and gathering the leggy adolescent into her arms. Iphany was silent, skirting more tears at the haunting familiarity of her mother's voice, face, and scent.

" I wish-"

"So do I, my darling, but it was not meant to be," Ilia replied, pulling back so that Iphany could look into her eyes. She took a deep breath, as though what she was about to say needed strength and steadiness to support it.

"In some years time, your father will send you away. I'm not sure where, or why, or with whom, but it is going to happen. I want you to be prepared for this. You will be given a task, and you must do your best to fill it exactly as you are told."

"What must I do, Mother?" Iphany asked, feeling a strange, fleeting bolt of destiny that shadowed her thoughts for a moment before flitting on to greater deeds.

"I don't know that either, my part is not important, for you will know what to do when the time comes. All of this, Iphany - all of this leads to your greatest task. You know of the slaughter, don't you?"

"Yes, I've read of it. And I've had dreams before. I saw what happened. I- "

"Good," Ilia replied, interrupting, her tone more hurried now. The lines of her skin began to drift with a faint, snowy blur. "You're going to be the one who sets all of those deaths right, Iphany. In time you will meet a man, the most powerful of all human men. And you will bring him to the three Sirens you saw in the sea today. I know it does not make sense now, but the path will be provided, and you must only be brave enough to follow it."

Iphany could see the wall and window through her mother's body now. She was fading, returning to the world beyond the dream that bound them.

"I'll try, Mother. I'll do what I can." She said solemnly, holding back the urge to beg and scream for her mother not to leave her again.

"I know you will. And Iphany, please remember this, for I know the chances will be plenty. Do not fall in love. Love destroys us, it destroys the men we chose, and it will be your ruin if you allow yourself to be weak. Never, ever give your heart away."

By this time she was nothing but a voice, and Iphany strained to hear the last of her words. The advice burrowed into her heart, settled there, and began to rot. Tendrils of cold unwound from the festering wound, crept through the web of vessels beneath her skin, dulled the memory of her father's violence until it dissolved into a distant gray whisper.

"Wait," she said, lifting her hand to brush the curious empty ache in her chest, "I -"

Iphany's eyes fluttered, shallow green still half hazed with sleep. Blat, the House Elf, jumped immediately from her hiding space behind the dresser as soon as the saw her mistress waking. The jittery thing snapped her fingers and produced a tray lightly laden with breakfast. Blat opened her mouth to speak, but one stern look from the girl sent her squealing under the bed.

Iphany picked at her food. Something was different, but she could not name it, could not follow the slippery thoughts that ran and trickled like water through fingers. She rose from the immense bed, untangling her legs from the covers and planting bare feet on the cool hardwood floor. The shadow of her reflection danced in the window as she approached.

Outside, the sand gleamed a fierce bone white, scudded here and there by dry scrubs of pathetic sea-grasses. The sun burned white-gold on the water, a lonely sailor riding the mirror of a cloudless sky. She sneered at the brightness, reached up with both hands to wrench the curtains shut.

"Blat," She said, whirling to face the bed. A pair of large amber eyes appeared from beneath the dust ruffle.

"Yes! Mistress Iphany Novara, what can I do for you?" Blat exclaimed as she crawled out and drew herself up in front of the girl.

"Round up all the Elves and draw the curtains. If my father has any objections, tell him-"

"Master Novara has left, Mistress Iphany. He has gone away this morning." Blat interjected, slapping a hand over her mouth when she was finished, even though her mistress had never been the kind to punish her for speaking out of turn. Iphany simply looked pensive and a touch relieved. She glanced at the grandfather clock on the wall. Angie would Apparate in the library in less than an hour for her lessons.

"Fine, then. Get out of here and do what I said." Iphany responded crossly, raising her nightdress over her head and discarding it on the floor. As she passed the mirror in her trek towards the bathroom, she paused for a moment. Her thin, ribby body wasn't much to look at, just beginning to bud into womanhood and showing the first signs of filling out. She regarded herself with detached interest, smoothing her hands over her flat stomach and rounding hips. When she glanced past her reflection, she saw Blat still standing in the doorway.

"Out!" Iphany barked, pointing viciously towards the door. Blat squealed and skittered out, and Iphany pattered into the lavatory to bathe.

Angie had never seen her charge so volatile. Iphany snapped and sneered at her every gentle prodding, refusing to answer any question regarding her newfound apathy. They'd always gotten along, keeping up a mild repartee that seemed to maintain Iphany's generally pleasant nature. She was spoiled, certainly, but not unkind in the way that many rich children tended to be. Or had not been, until today. Something must have happened to her, and while Angie was not inclined to meddle much in her mysterious employer's affairs, she had never really trusted Icarus Novara.

"Iphany," she said, "Are you certain you're all right?"

"Angie, if you ask me again I'm going to tell father I need another tutor," the girl replied. Angie sat back in her chair, eyebrows comically high over the rims of her glasses. She opened her mouth to respond, but the frigid, empty look in Iphany's eyes stilled the words behind her teeth. Angie shook her head and opened the second-year potions textbook, and cleared her throat before beginning to read.

They zipped through the day's lesson. Apparently Iphany's attitude did not apply to her studies. In fact, she seemed even more devoted to the task of learning than usual, forgoing lunch to continue studying far in to the afternoon. The only time she asked Angie anything out of the ordinary was near five, just as she was getting ready to leave.

"Angie. What is Crucio?" She asked, flipping idly through a volume on Transfiguration as Angie readied herself to leave for the evening.

"My goodness, Iphany! Where did you hear of that?" Angie asked, pausing in the middle of shoving her books and supplies back into a bag. She studied the girl with serious brown eyes, shoving her glasses back up on her nose with one finger. It occurred to her then, for the first time, that Iphany was really beginning to grow up. Her round, childish face was thinning, hinting at the sleek structure of cheekbone and fine arch of brow that would be revealed with the passage of a few short years. Angie felt a stab of sorrow so sudden and poignant that she almost felt the hot rush of tears. Iphany looked up from her book, startled by the woman's reaction.

"It doesn't matter. What is it?" She demanded, marking her place in the book with a finger. Angie chewed on her lower lip before responding.

"Crucio is the verbal incantation of the Cruciatus curse. It's one of the three Unforgivable curses. It causes the victim pain beyond imagining, and invoking its use once will earn you a life sentence in Azkaban. Where on earth did you -" She trailed off, taking in Iphany's stony expression and suddenly understanding.

"Iphany...did...your father -"

"That's enough. You can go now. I'll see you tomorrow." Iphany interrupted, now appearing to be absorbed in her reading again. Angie opened her mouth as if to say something else, and then decided against it. She finished packing her books, fighting back the youthfully maternal urge that tried to propel her to comfort the girl.

Iphany did not look up until she heard the crack of Disapparation. She closed the book, absently folding the page back to mark her last paragraph. An interesting thought tiptoed into the back of her brain, one that would have been completely out of character the evening before. Yet the new, vast stretch of indifference that had matured in her mind demanded she nourish this new curiosity, so she placed the book on the side table and rose from wing-backed chair.

"Blat!" She shouted, and within a moment the nervous Elf appeared in front of her, twisting her dirty rags in both trembling hands. She did not know what she had done to make her sweet mistress so angry this day, when all the days that preceded it had seen her treated in a manner she had not known since Mistress Ilia passed. Mistress Iphany was good and kind, like her mother had been. What had changed?

"Crucio," She muttered, and Blat flinched, for she had heard that word before, and knew what was coming.

But the expected pain did not descend, thought Blat thought she might have preferred it to the cold flash of anger that passed over her mistress' eyes.

"Crucio!" Iphany said again, giving her wand an impatient flick. Still, nothing. Blat cowered with her hands over her eyes, waiting for a torment that never came.

"Oh _get_ out of here," Iphany spat out, flinging her wand across the room. It clattered against the ocean tapestry on the wall and rolled innocuously across the stones.

Blat vanished with a squeak, and Iphany went back to her reading.

"This is not the way it is supposed to be, Otilde!" Renali seethed, lowering the large pearl orb and letting it drift back to the ocean floor. She could just see the Novara house over the hill, but the distance and obstruction of sand did not hinder her view, for Sirens have ways of observing those they love that are undetectable to the eyes of men.

"She had no other choice, Renali. Ilia knew what she was doing. The freeze on Iphany's heart is not unbreakable, you know Ilia would not make it so. She is protecting her daughter, our little sister, from the same pain that traps her own soul even in death," Otilde responded. She would not allow the doubt to creep into her voice.

"The poor darling," Alba said, gliding up to join them. "She was beginning to love the girl who tutored her. She could have so used a woman to guide and protect her. And her father...it seems an unjust risk, to keep her there. We do not know if he will continue to hurt her."

"Risk is all we have," said Renali. "And at least Ilia's enchantment will protect her. It won't stop the pain, but it will prevent further suffering, further damage to her spirit."

"If she ever seems in real danger..." Otilde trailed off and shook her head. "I would rather see our race die and our debtors go unpunished than allow him to destroy her."

"Can't you see?" Renali asked, unable to keep the sneer out of her voice.

"I can," Otilde admitted after a while. "He will try once more. But I don't know if he will succeed, or if she will survive."

It was a long time before any of them could swim far from the cove.


	8. Offering

Time passed, as it does, rifling across the days and seasons, riding the ellipses of the heavens as the earth spins along, unconcerned. Iphany kept up with her lessons, followed the empty, predictable path of her life, growing in body but not in spirit. Her mother's enchantment served its purpose, removing Iphany from the loneliness of her life, insulating her from the knowledge of her father's indifference. She lost all love for the small things that once pleased her; morning birds chattering to one another, the melt of fresh jam of her tongue, the smell of unread stories when the sun warmed the books in the library.

Her only joy came from her nightly swim, though she had not been sure, after that evening, that her father would allow it to continue. But he made no move to stop her, and she wisely kept her song to herself, though each day without it robbed some of the sparkle from her eyes and dulled the moonlight gleam of her skin. Within a year Angie excused herself from her position, no longer able to watch the girl fading away like a ghost that does not know it is dead. She was replaced with a stern older woman who insisted that her student keep to the proscribed curriculum, halting any examination of talents beyond the typical path of a well-trained Witch. It was all the same to Iphany.

Her father came and went, and if he felt remorse for the way he had tortured her, he did not speak of it. They dined together when he requested it, usually a tense, compulsory affair. Iphany suffered the meetings and answered his questions, noting that as the years wore on he looked at her more easily, that he did not cringe from the sight of her face.

 _Perhaps my resemblance to the Siren peaked at eleven, and I'm starting to look more like him_ , she reasoned one evening over dinner. Icarus tucked in to a nauseating slab of steak with mechanical precision, his hard, unlined faced seamed with a grimace as he swallowed each bite.

"And Transfiguration?" He asked. "Any progress there?"

"Some," she replied. "Salt, please?" He nudged it across the table, but looked away as she upended it into her glass of water.

"I do fine with inanimate objects. Pencils to knives, stones to roses, that sort of thing. But I can't seem to manage anything alive."

"What happens when you try?" He asked. She shrugged and slid another raw oyster off the iced platter in front of her. Her tongue knew that the chilled burst of jellied brine was delicious, and it reminded her enough of the sea to coax a small sigh as it slipped down her throat.

"Whatever it is usually dies," she said. "We stopped after I turned a mouse inside out. Madame Adienne was not pleased."

"Interesting," said her father. He finished his steak and dabbed his mouth with a napkin.

"Madame thinks it's the Siren in me," she continued, ignoring the clatter of cutlery that her father dropped with a shudder. "Since each discipline tends towards a particular element. Transfiguration being an earth-magic, I'm not very good at it."

"I told you not to speak that word," Icarus warned. "And you shouldn't be talking to Adienne about it, either. What you are has no bearing on your ability to learn magic that any other competent witch could master without much trouble."

"Except that it clearly does," Iphany argued. "I'm not-"

"Stop making excuses," Icarus snapped back. "It's so _common_."

"Well what does it matter, anyway?" She said, a sting of anger touching her imperturbable calm. "It's not as though I'll ever get a chance to use any of it, unless you plan on freeing the house Elves and putting me to work."

"It matters, you impertinent child, because you are a Novara."

Icarus stood up, having clearly exhausted his tolerance.

"You come from a long and distinguished line of Pureblooded witches and wizards, and I would never allow any child of mine to grow up without the proper training befitting your heritage."

"I'm no Pureblood," she said, "Unless you're going to tell my that mother was _not_ a Siren, in which case I'll have to ask -"

"Don't. Say. That. Word," Icarus said. He gripped the back of his chair until his knuckles blanched. Seized with rebellion, Iphany stood up, too, knocking over her water glass in the process.

"Siren," she said. Her father staggered and winced. "Siren, siren, _siren, siren!"_

He let out a horrible, window-rattling cry and clapped his hands over his ears. Oh, it felt _good_ to shout. It felt good to use her voice, felt good to submit to the rage burning beneath her skin. He wanted to pretend she was ordinary, pretend that she had simply sprung up like a toadstool in some damp corner of the garden, pretend she had no mother, pretend she was human.

 _I am not human,_ came the unbidden thought, wild and loud. How had she never allowed herself the luxury of fury before? All this time she had accepted her numbness as absolute, but really she had been looking for meaning in all the wrong places. If she got angry enough, she could feel – really _feel_ something.

"Siren," she said again, this time in a languid, melodic purr. It was almost a song. It should be a song. Her father was on his knees, weeping gently.

"Si-i-i-i-iren," she sang. A hot white bloom unfurled its petals in her chest. She grinned and crouched down. "I'm a Siren, daddy."

Suddenly his hand shot out and closed around her throat. Her fingers went immediately to his, digging and scraping at the back of his hand. He lunged at her with an animal cry, knocked her back and to the floor. Her head struck the stone with an acute red _crack._

"Stop," she wheezed, knees and legs flailing to seek purchase on some vulnerable part of him. He dropped all of his weight on her and tightened his fingers. His tears dropped warm rain on her cheeks and forehead.

"Daddy," she gasped. "Daddy, I'm sorry, please -"

He would not relent. Her eyes rolled up, past his sweating, anguished face, caught a glimpse of the copper ceiling, the chandelier firing elegant silver and gold. A sticky funnel of coldness pricked the edge of her vision. Her wriggling faltered, stuttered, stilled. Beneath the pounding roar in her ears she could hear something else, a melody that was at once both memory and mystery, a round of faint, high voices lifted in chorus.

 _They are calling me home,_ she thought, as the world went black.

She drew a swift, unhindered breath. Above her was only the copper and crystal, her fathers face was gone. She flung herself up from the floor, sucking gasp after gasp of warm air, tears of relief stinging her eyes. What had happened? Where did he go?

Her eyes focused on the blurry form a few meters ahead of her. Icarus crouched with a hand on his left arm, hissing in pain. Had she hurt him in some way? She shook her head to clear the remaining shreds of unconsciousness, chest burning as she continued to pant.

He looked up at her then, a litany of emotions darting in and out of his eyes. Scales of anger, sorrow, remorse – and then his expression settled on a grim, determined hope.

"He's back," Icarus said. Iphany shook her head, not trusting her swollen throat to support the words her mouth wished to speak.

Her father produced his wand and raised it in her direction. Iphany froze, knowing that he now meant to finish the job that his hands had begun. She shut her eyes, waiting for the blow.

"Imagomemori!"

She did not recognize the spell, but when no pain or blackness came, she carefully opened her eyes. A blinding blue light surrounded her, obscuring her father from view. With a flick of his wrist the light receded, trickling back into the tip of his wand until it vanished entirely.

He glared down at her once more, and then he Disapparated.

. . .

For the third time, Harry Potter - the child! - had eluded death, this time surrounded by over two dozen Death Eaters. He'd even actually managed to _stun_ two of them as he made a mad roll and dash for the Triwizard cup that would send him back to safety at Hogwarts. Avery and Nott slumped in a disoriented heap against a broken-winged granite angel gone black with moss. Voldemort Crucio'ed them until his anger was somewhat spent.

Then he ordered them - all of them - to get out of his sight. Had it been so long that they had forgotten how to truly obey, to truly serve? What a disastrous thought. If that were the case, what was he to do when the real work began? He only half noticed as the remaining Death Eaters disappeared around him, leaving him alone with Nagini in the center of the graveyard.

At least, he thought he was alone. One hooded figure remained, and was now slowly approaching the Dark Lord.

"What did I say? I do not want to see any of you, you disgust me, I-"

"Please, my Master, allow me a moment to speak with you. I have an offer I do not think you want to refuse," Came Icarus Novara's voice from beneath the hood. He lifted the black fabric and mask and faced his Lord and Master, eyes averted to the dead gray grass of the graveyard.

"Icarus," Voldemort snapped, glaring with half-lidded eyes. "Please, tell me why I shouldn't curse you where you stand?

"My most honorable Master, I took a wife not long after your absence. She was a full-blooded -" He paused, voice breaking pathetically over the word, "Siren."

"Not only a coward, but a blood-traitor, too," Voldemort replied. "If this was meant to sway my opinion, you have forgotten who I am."

Incredibly, Icarus _smiled._ He took out his wand and snapped it at the air before them.

A shadowy form, outlined in cobalt blue, slithered out of the end of the wand and settled on the ground between them. It was a young girl, perhaps Potter's age, staring up at the pair of them with large, questioning eyes.

"My daughter," said Icarus. "Iphany."

The Dark Lord froze, took a step back, looked up at his acolyte with a sneer.

"You mean to tempt me with some false creature? That is not real."

"I assure you, my Lord, she is very real. A child, still, but not for much longer," Icarus replied. He flicked his wand again and the Imago sharpened in focus, drawing closer to show the details of the girl's face.

"Few will believe the tales that Potter tells of this night, but the ones who do will take every caution to insulate him so that it does not happen again. If we send her to Hogwarts...allow her to lure the boy, to make him love her...there is nothing that will stop him from following her. I know from experience."

"And why, then, have you kept her away all this time?" Voldemort asked. His slitted red gaze still clung to the image before him. "If it was as easy as you say."

"For her protection," Icarus said. "Forgive me, sir, but you are transfixed by an Imago. Imagine if she was here before you."

The Dark Lord approached the shimmering mirage, knelt down and drew close to observe the girl, so close that he could see – perhaps even smell, touch, taste the tears rimming the corners of her eyes, slide his pale hands along the slender neck, mark the unblemished flesh with hands and teeth, hear the desperate, broken cries as she shattered beneath him –

"And what will keep her safe now?" He whispered.

"She can be taught to control," Icarus said. "I am immune to her presence, being that she is of my blood, but her mother–"

He paused long enough to draw Volemort's attention. A muscle clenched in Icarus' jaw. His hands were wound into iron coils. After a moment, he continued.

"Her mother was able to manage the better part of her allure. She could always silence a room with her presence, but she was able to temper it, make those who would desire her so afraid, so humbled, so intimidated by her light and beauty that they could not bring themselves to even meet her eyes. I believe Iphany can learn this as well, now that she is older. No man would dare to touch her unless she allowed it."

He joined the Dark Lord on the ground, kneeling before the vision of his daughter.

"Give me a year to allow her to learn. Let me send her to Hogwarts, as your faithful servant, to retrieve the boy for you. No one will suspect her. My name is good, my ties with the Ministry are strong. Take time to recover your glory, to find your supporters and punish those who have strayed. It would be the greatest honor of my life to offer my child to your service."

"And after?" Voldemort asked. "If she succeeds, if she brings the boy to me..."

"She will be yours, my Lord. Body and soul."


	9. Promise

"I know you're out there."

Night-black eyes above the waves, a flash of white skin and silver-blue hair. Alba was on watch tonight while her sisters dove for clams and oysters in the calmer waters off the western shore of the island. Only she had seen the exchange in the dining hall, only she had felt the girl's blunted thud of fear and pain. And now the man stood before her, staring blindly out at the ocean, his weak human vision searching for something he would not see unless it wished to be seen.

The Siren hovered uncertainly behind the jetty of rocks that lined the sea-ward edge of the cove. She slipped her hands across the stones and pulled herself up to better observe the man as he wore a nervous path through the sand and grass. Though she could not sense any violence or danger from him personally, a peripheral haze of some distant evil clung to his spirit. It was not his own, but someone else's, someone beyond the realm of normal human darkness. Someone deadly.

Someone powerful.

Otilde said that Ilia foresaw the girl delivering the most powerful human man to them for retribution. Was it his aura trailing behind Iphany's father? Otilde would simply watch and wait, Renali would not be able to control her desire to hurt him for what he had done to the little girl.

But she was Alba, the youngest daughter of the moon and the sea. It was she who best loved and pitied the earth-bound mortals, her descendants who most often fell in love with the men who pursued them. She would not wait and she would not retaliate. She would hear him, first, and deliver her judgement after.

She took a moment to center herself, to gather the cold music of her beauty and grace, groom and shape it until she gave out a regal, untouchable air. Changing the chords of her power worked best on men who knew, or at least believed in what she was. The magic-less people of Shallycob had too much invested in reality and not enough faith in the enigmas of the invisible world; the wizards who walked among them were more receptive to the subtleties of enchantment.

The man stumbled back as she climbed up and perched on the rocks, poised on her heels, ready to dive back into the turbulent arms of her mother should he try anything foolish. But he recovered himself and remained a good distance from her; close enough to hear his ragged breath, far enough to give her a good head start.

"You look different than she did," he said once he was a bit more used to her presence. The creature on the rocks was no less a goddess than the one he had loved, but her skin was more sand-gold than lunar white, hair a silver-violet prism rather than an ebony so deep it swallowed light and returned the lustre of midnight. The differences made it a bit easier to regard her, though he still felt the need to avert his eyes in acknowledgement of unworthiness.

It took a while for Alba's mouth to remember the taste and shape of the human language, so when she spoke it was slow and careful, tinged with the song of her native tongue.

"I was not her mother," she explained. "Why do you come?"

"I need Iphany to learn to control her power as you do," he replied. "To protect herself."

He spoke the truth, but not entirely. Alba canted her head, a simple gesture that demanded elaboration. The man swallowed and continued.

"She has a task on earth," he explained. "She will need to be among people – among men. I have kept her hidden, but cannot any longer. She must know how to keep herself safe."

"Who is task?" Alba asked. She knew the phrase wasn't quite right but the man seemed to take her meaning.

"It is for a very great wizard. The greatest, many would say. He needs her."

Alba stifled the spark of excitement and nodded.

"We can teach," she said. The man smiled, but on his mouth the expression held no hint of joy.

"Should I bring her to you?" He asked. "I...I fear she will not wish to return to this life once she knows there is another she could have."

"Let her sing," the Siren said. "She stopped, when you hurt her. Tell her to sing, when she swims at night. The song is the power, the song teaches us."

"Is there no other way?" He looked pained, and his hands twitched at his side as though longing to block out the mere memory of her music. Alba shook her head.

"She is Siren. Let her be Siren."

. . .

Alba relayed the exchange to her sisters when they returned, and Otilde could not stop praising the decision she'd made to speak to him.

"It is nothing but fate that saw you there tonight instead of us," she said. Her eyes shone with promise. "You did so well, little sister. I could not be more proud."

"You should have dragged him down and made you tell him the dark one's name," Renali grumbled. The hard pinch of Otilde's fingers on her side made her jump and let out a gusty sigh. "But Otilde is right, of course."

"I am glad he listened," Alba said, basking in the glow of her sisters' praise. "She would have not lasted much longer without the song. Locking her heart away is one thing, but denying her nature would have been fatal." She cut her eyes over at Otilde. "Do you think we can sing with her, some day?"

"If the man is not home, I think we can. But we will have to keep a distance. She is so willful, and so lonely, even if she cannot feel it. If we get too close she will want to join us and then all our suffering – all _her_ suffering would be in vain," Otilde replied.

"We should sing for her tonight," Alba said. "I told the man to open the window while she sleeps."

They waited until the house was dark, waited until they could see drapes billowing out of the open windows of an uppermost room. Then they wove a song for their sleeping sister, a melody declaring safety, and peace, and love waiting like the promise of a not so distant dawn.


	10. Return

Iphany squared her wand and scowled at Madame.

"I want to do it," she said. Her small study, flush with cloud-muted morning light, was strewn with the organized dross of her lessons. A pile of parchment threatened collapse from the center of the red elm desk, and a charred-bottom cauldron by the window coughed up cloud after cloud of pungent-smelling vapor. Madame Adienne shook her head and moved to retrieve the cage.

"Want and can are not the same thing," Madame said. "I'll not subject another creature to your mistakes, it isn't fair, and it's cruel."

"So?" Iphany asked, rolling her shoulders in a shrug. "It's just a sparrow, there are thousands more where it came from. It doesn't matter."

Madame Avery gaped, horrified. "It matters to this one." She walked over to the window and opened it, then unlatched the birdcage and held it halfway out.

"Madame," Iphany said, coming around from behind the work table towards the older woman. She stuck her hand in her pocket and traced the outline of her wand. "Don't let it go."

"Iphany, if you want to give it a go with an earthworm or a whelk I won't stop you, but I'm not going to watch you disembowel this innocent thing." She shook the cage, trying to urge the bird out. It fluttered about the cage but couldn't seem to find the opening.

"Madame," Iphany said again, her tone more forceful. "Close that window and bring me that bird."

Madame narrowed her eyes and rattled the cage again.

"I am not a House Elf, Miss Novara, and if you don't watch yourself I'll be telling your father about this," she said. "Go on, you foolish thing, go!"

"Bother my father," Iphany said, then she snatched her wand from her pocket and pointed it at the cage. "Ornithicandere!"

The bird did not turn inside out, but it gave a a terrified screech before breaking apart into several hundred tiny feathered pieces. Madame screamed and dropped the cage.

"Why did you do that?" She shouted. Her face and hands were spattered with scarlet. Iphany put her wand back and backed away a few paces. She'd never seen Madame so angry before.

"If you wouldn't have been shaking it -"

"You will not," Madame interrupted, "Blame this on me. I told you not to do it. What is _wrong_ with you, girl?" She drew out her own wand and passed it over her face and hands to dispel the blood.

"Poor little chap," she said softly as she performed another charm to gather up the feathers and bones and squishy red bits off the floor. Iphany sat down behind the table with a huff and kicked the slats of her wooden stool with her heels.

 _Bloody bird,_ she thought darkly, and then let out a quick burst of laughter at her own joke. Madame regarded her as though she'd sprouted tentacles and began gathering up her things and throwing them into her bag.

"Oh come on now, Madame, don't leave," she said. She hopped off the stool and snatched Madame's bag to prevent her from putting anything else inside. "I'm sorry, I just really wanted to get it right."

"The moment we put desire above suffering is the moment we start down a path with no discernible end," Madame said. She swished her wand at the bag and it dislodged himself from Iphany's arms. "If that is the path you wish to take, I am not equipped to teach you."

"I swear, I didn't mean it, I just really thought it would work this time," Iphany said. "Don't go, please." _Don't leave me all alone again._

Madame paused, her books hovering above the large brocaded knapsack. She did not meet Iphany's eyes.

"When I was small, my father's owl disappeared. We waited for weeks for it to come back, and I even got the idea of putting up an add in the Prophet for a reward. My mum helped me with my spelling and wouldn't let me use my own pocket money to pay for it. He loved that owl, you see, and the owl loved him back. It wasn't something you'd see every day, that thing slept perched on the headboard of his bed and sat on his shoulder pretty as you please. The only one who wouldn't help was my little sister. She was just a baby then, probably five or six, so we didn't expect much from her. After a while Mum and I gave up thinking we'd find the owl, but my father did not. He kept searching. We moved houses a year later, and he left strict instructions with the next owners to contact him should they happen to see a large horned owl hanging about the house."

Iphany's mind was starting to drift towards other things, like whether or not she might take her swim early. She hadn't seen her father all day and his cloak was not on its customary hook in the marble tiled foyer, which usually indicated he'd be gone for a while. She wondered if -

"And when we went back to look, we saw it. It was alive, all right, but in this case it wasn't a cause for celebration. She did something to it, my sister. Kept it alive, but tortured it. Feathers all plucked out, beak clipped, naked wings nailed up to the wall behind the secret compartment in her closet. Told us she was just playing, just trying to learn, didn't think she was really hurting it, just wanted to see what would happen. It should not surprise you to learn that she was in Azkaban before she finished her sixth year at Hogwarts. Murdered a little boy, a first year."

Iphany stopped wondering about swimming and looked at Madame. Her eyes were dry, but she was trembling.

"Forgive me, then, if I am intolerant of _just_ ," she finished. Iphany could not quite find the words to respond.

"I'll need a day, Miss Novara. If you can give me your word that you will not harm another living thing again, I will continue to teach you." She zipped up her bag and Disapparated.

When she was gone Iphany retrieved the cage and sat it on the table in front of her. She counted each of the narrow silver bars, knocked the perch with a knuckle so it swung back and forth, opened and closed the door. A minuscule droplet of blood, missed by Madame's spell, stuck to one of the bars. When she looked closer she saw a tiny wisp of brown feather stuck to the spot.

She knew she was supposed to feel bad, and not in the objective sense of comparing her reaction to the someone normal. She knew that she, personally, was not the type to be indifferent to suffering. This kernel of truth, badly in need of sunlight and rain, lay buried in the soil of her mind, refusing to germinate past a few half-hearted sprouts. Everything she experienced was something that happened _to_ her, a story played out in vivid dimensions, but not something she participated in. That was why it had felt so good to get angry at her father the night before; it nudged the seedling and lifted the veil for a moment or two, chasing after her heart til it beat a fast unruly rhythm on a white skin drum.

As much as she tried, she could not bring herself to care about the bird or the mouse or the fish that wound up scaled, yet still alive, when she'd tried to turn it into a crystal paperweight. Nor could she muster any concern for the fact that she didn't care. She didn't even _care_ that she didn't care. This was no hidden urge to do harm because she could, it was an apathy beyond the capacity for reason.

After a bit she tucked a Potions book under her arm, planning to go up to her room and read until the sun slipped a few degrees lower in the afternoon sky. But when she opened the door and made to march into the hallway, she ran directly into her father with a surprised _oof!_

"Oh," she said, rubbing her shoulder where she'd banged into him. "It's you."

"I suppose it is," he replied. His lips twisted up in the hideous approximation of a smile. "Will you take tea with me?"

"I don't know," she said. "Are you going to try and murder me again?"

Icarus' mouth opened and closed for a few moments before he shook his head.

"No. I'm...no. I'm not going to try to murder you. I just want to talk."

She eyed him like someone who suspects their opponent is cheating at cards. Finally she nodded.

"Yeah, all right," she replied. "Let's talk."

. . .

A House Elf brought tea and petit fours to his study. Iphany was still marveling at the fact that he'd actually let her in. Even when he did not have guests it was locked. A grand old writing desk stood in an alcove flanked by windows at least four meters high, though the curtains were tightly drawn to avoid even the suggestion of outside light. The walls were deep, burnished red, pocked with strong-armed candelabras and portraits of her progenitors, stern features softened by the artist's folly. She'd once asked father why he had no portraits of her mother, and he'd told her that the painter they'd commissioned went mad after a week, obsessed with his inability to capture her face and his failure to achieve the right shade of blue to limn the starlit waves of hair. Last he heard, the man was still at St. Mungos and spent his days crying to himself and drawing blue-green eyes and long, slender fingers.

She sat in a low-backed chair by the hearth as her father circled the tea tray a few times, aimlessly adding milk and an ungodly amount of sugar to his tea. He sent Iphany's over with an absent wand-flick.

"You wanted to talk?" She asked when the silence began to pluck at her nerves. Her father cleared his throat and finally stopped violating his tea long enough to join her in the opposite chair.

"It has come to my attention that you do not sing when you swim," he said. "Please start this evening."

"Um...no," she replied. Of all the things she'd expected to hear from him, this one hadn't even made the imaginary list. "The last time you caught me doing that was deeply unpleasant. I would rather not repeat that encounter."

"I'm..." He took several long gulps of his tea, wincing as it went down. No wonder, it might as well have been pudding for everything he put in it. "I will not be here when you do. Just tell me the hours you plan to be in the cove and I will attend to business elsewhere until you are finished."

"Well it's different every night," she said, put out by the prospect of having to schedule the one thing that she did without restraint.

"If I am away, I will set up a Protean charm to allow you to alert me that you are...indisposed. You can use it to tell me when you begin and when you stop."

"But _why?_ " Iphany asked. "What do you care if I sing or not?"

"I, ah...I did some reading recently. It's not good for your kind to deny that part of yourselves. Can weaken you to the point of death, or so I've read."

"Like you'd care," Iphany muttered. Her father stopped fussing with the pleats in his trousers and fixed her with a withering glare.

"You are my daughter, Iphany. I am the _only_ person who cares if you live or die," he said. She swallowed her tea glared back.

"Fine," she replied. "Anything else?"

"Yes," he said. "I'll be sending you to Hogwarts next year."

. . .

She went to the cove at six, after tapping on her father's door (locked, again, but what else could she expect) to let him know she'd be starting soon. He did not reply, but she heard the pop of Disapparation and assumed he'd heard her.

For a while she swam silently as usual, alternating between diving down to the shallow bottom of the pond and floating on her back with her face to the moonless and starless sky. Heavy clouds reluctant to relieve themselves of rain moved along with a wind still chilled by the last gasp of winter. Summer in the Hebrides was summer in name alone; it was simply a time when it was slightly less wet and dreary.

The fuzziness at the back of her throat was there again, too, like it always was. She'd learned to ignore it over the last couple of years, though there were times it grew so irritating that it bordered on painful, especially when she swam. Tonight she would not ignore, she would indulge. A quick throb of fear struck the inside of her chest.

When she began it was very soft, just a reluctant hum buzzing out of her nose. As she continued the fear began to ebb, swallowed in incremental gulps by the hungry melody. It seemed a living thing, her song, a being not entirely tethered to the physical world, somehow managing to weave itself between the dark secret places that do not love the dawn.

She opened her mouth and let the creature free, pitching her voice up until it was snatched away by the breeze and carried off, presumably to give some unsuspecting soul a nightmare of grief and loss on the other side of the world. The song was thick with melancholy, but it needed something more, something to balance the headiness and lift the heart rather than drop-kick it repeatedly down a flight of stairs. Iphany closed her eyes and concentrated on the minute rumblings of her vocal chords, finding that suddenly her voice produced a _second_ sound, weaving beneath the first in rich and elegant harmony. A listener would perceive two singers, puzzled by the fact that only one could be seen, and that all sound seemed to spring from her alone.

 _Well that is something,_ she thought. As she sang she continued to explore, finding that adding a third harmony was either not possible or beyond the current scope of her ability. Oddly the second voice seemed to behave of its own volition, hitting notes that she did not believe a human could _hear,_ let alone reproduce.

In time she began to realize that the second voice did not belong to her at all. It came from her throat, yes, used the breath from her lungs for support, but it was not her own. She was the vessel through which the song met the world and nothing more.

And so she began to listen.


	11. Denial

_Eleven months later..._

 _. . . . ._

"Why is it you're always skulking about in corners, Icarus?"

It was precisely the second time he'd hung back after the rest of them had been dismissed, but he had not stayed alive this long without learning when it was worth it to argue with the Dark Lord. (Never.) He nodded his contrition and cleared his throat.

"Iphany will be ready by the summer, my Lord. She has learned much in the months since I first made my offer, and I come tonight to assure you that Harry Potter is now living on borrowed time."

Voldemort scoffed and swept across the floor to stand before Icarus. The monstrous fire glazing the hearth-stones red outlined his towering form and made him look even less human than usual, if that were possible. He regarded Icarus like someone who has just discovered a shiny-winged beetle that they intend to watch for a bit before crushing it beneath a bootheel.

"Why do you feel the need to tell me this? You made a pledge to me. Pledges to me are not broken. I require no reassurance that you will hold up your end of the bargain."

"I know, my Lord. Your faith in me is both humbling and an honor beyond what I deserve," Icarus said. He centered himself, mentally rolling through his prepared speech for the hundredth time. Voldemort was no sympathizer with those who valued things like marriage and family and love. He must tread carefully, both to avoid being perceived as daring to manipulate his Master and to ensure that his request did not disturb his Master's distaste for emotional vulnerability. If Voldemort detected even a hint of human frailty, he'd either refuse on the spot or exploit the exposed weakness to some harsh and punishing end.

"When she succeeds – and I have no doubt that she will – I would ask a favor of you, My Lord. Not in recompense, of course, but at your mercy."

If the Dark Lord had eyebrows Icarus suspected that one of them would be lifted in an arch of suspicion. As it stood, the minute constriction of his scarlet eyes was the only indication of his displeasure. Voldemort liked granting favors from time to time, as it further ingratiated his servants to him and left them open to further coercion, should a recipient suddenly wane reticent over a command. Icarus took his silence as assent to continue.

"I recently learned more of the details of your incredible survival," he said. Lie number one; he'd known from the beginning, when nasty Pettigrew went scraping to each of them to beg assistance in bringing about his return. "I do not pretend to be so foolish as to think I might try and understand this power you possess-" Lie number two, he'd been researching the Dark Lord's apparent ascension from the gates of Death ever since it came to pass, to no real avail, "But I know that it required a keen understanding of the Dark Arts and a power that no other wizard before you has dared to dream of." That part was true. The next bit was the hardest to say with conviction, as the filth of the lie tore at the roots of his heart.

"I desire to raise my wife from the dead," he said, nonchalance laid on with a trowel. "I have known many women since then-" Lie number three, he had known none, "And nothing has ever quite compared to the pleasure I took from the S-...Siren. I would have her back here, my Lord, to do with as I wish. Her passing was unfortunate, for I had so many other things I wished to...ah... _teach_ her." He let the words insinuate themselves, not bothering to force the implication behind them. The Dark Lord fluttered his fingers through the request and said,-

"Just have your Siren-spawn back, when I've finished with her. It's all the same."

Icarus kept still; he'd expected this response, trained himself not to react to it. But when faced with hearing the words out loud, an actual wave of burning bile rose as far as the center of his tongue. He smiled around the disgust and swallowed lightly.

"There are several problems with that, my Lord, the least of which is that being related to me dulls the majority of her attraction." It pained him to have to explain why incest was not, in fact, the same thing, but he knew such subtleties were lost on his Master. "Another is that unlike you, I am a man who does not possess the strength of will to resist the entrapment of a Siren. Even in death she holds sway over me, and I would have my revenge for that injustice."

"I see," said Voldemort. "Well, my infatuated little friend, I am afraid I cannot help you."

Icarus smiled. He'd expected this, too. Voldemort gave nothing away for free, even though his greatest weakness was his predilection for flattery. Icarus had that ready in droves, if needed, but knew this was a narrow needle to thread.

"My Lord, I am at your disposal. Whatever you need from me in exchange, you must only ask and you shall receive it."

" I do not doubt that I shall, but I tell you that I cannot give you what you seek, at least not in the way you require. I could fashion a body, certainly, use your memories to shape it, use a variety of spells to give it the appearance of life. But if you merely wanted a warm puppet, I should think your daughter would suffice. I survived because I took measures to ensure I would never entirely depart this world, not because I have the power to bring souls back from the dead. You'll have to take your revenge and pleasure elsewhere."

The song took roost in the back of Icarus' mind, spread its wings, and started to whisper. It was a familiar refrain, rising from an early and undeserved grave, interred beneath the mounting hope that had been building these last months, ever since the Dark Lord's return. Dead, but alive. Destroyed, but reborn. The power existed, it _had_ to. His mouth was dry and sour, his vision dipped now and again into an alarming shade of gray.

"Thank you for hearing me, Master. I shall keep you apprised of my daughter's progress at Hogwarts."

His own collected, reverent voice glanced and rebounded off the grating roar of the song in his ears. It was the last thing he remembered before waking up in Azkaban.

. . . .

Coralynn was late. This would not have been so bad if the event to which she was tardy was anything other than Great-great Aunt Ermina's ninety fifth birthday party. Aunt Ermina would no doubt call her out for being the last to arrive, her tongue still sharp enough to draw blood. Ermina was Shallycob's eldest citizen, which meant that she had the right to say whatever she damn well pleased to whomever she damn well pleased. Coralynn knew she was supposed to be respectful and reverent to the town matriarch, but sometimes she wondered why the old biddy couldn't just kick the bucket and be done with it.

She had just turned on to Breadalbane street when she broke into a half- jog, her shadow stretched long and chasing her from streetlamp to streetlamp. It was a cool evening in infant summer, and the stars winked sleepily above her in a deepening black sky.

Coralynn wasn't paying much attention to her surroundings, as her initial and most prevalent thought was to get to the party as quickly as possible. Several blocks ahead she would see the orange glow of a bonfire burning in Ermina's back yard. Faint sounds of revelry reached her ears, and she could not help a smile. Perhaps -

And then - _right in front of her!_ -there was a very tall man swathed in gray shadow. Coralynn let out an screech and skidded to a halt.

"Hullo," she said, winded from her run and miffed at the sudden startling. The man, who was dressed rather oddly (a cape? In April? ) shifted at the sound of her voice. He stepped forward into the light, and she had two thoughts in rapid succession: he was entirely too handsome to be real, and the look in his eyes was nothing short of terrifying.

She stumbled back , repulsed by the sight of those eyes, black and blameless as two bits of smudgy coal, devoid of anything resembling humanity.

Coralynn did not register that he had reached inside the folds of his cloak and had taken two dashing steps down the street when she heard him mutter a word that was not a word, cru-

Icarus watched as the girl pitched forward onto her knees, mouth agape as the Cruciatus fell upon her body. He wielded his wand lightly, refreshing the curse with wrist-snaps as though he were cracking a whip. She started to scream; that wouldn't do at all. It was the center of town, it was barely dark, people would -

"Hey, what's goin' on out there?"

The muggle trotted down the steps of the shop and swore, shocked to stillness by the man's strange appearance, his wordless malice, and the sight of old Ermina's niece writhing in agony on the cobblestones. He lunged for the stranger but his arms passed through thin air; belatedly he heard the unnatural cracking sound and realized both the man and the girl had vanished into the night.

. . . .

Iphany returned from her swim that evening to find both doors of her father's study flung wide open, but no light or fire coming from within. She passed her hand over her hair to wick away the seawater and summoned her robe from the hook by the stairs, not wanting to be caught looking, well, like a Siren if her father was indeed at home.

The room was empty and cold, with not a quill out of place to indicate any presence other than her own. The only odd thing (besides the fact that the doors were open in the first place) was that the drapes were parted to admit the glow of a waning moon.

She took out her wand, intending to send them closed. It had to be that the house Elves were cleaning and had gotten distracted, despite the fact that it had never happened before. She'd shut the drapes and the doors and carry on with her evening, and deal with Blat's negligence in the morning.

But a small, pitiful noise caught her ear, so faint she might have imagined it, if she didn't trust her own hearing so completely. Her senses were always deliciously heightened for a too-brief hour following her swim, so much so that if she wanted to she could focus on the town some three or four kilometers away and pick out the buzz of conversation from the nearest pub. This was real and much closer, coming, she thought, from behind the divan that stretched in languid green suede before the open windows.

"Hello?" She called. A small, sharp gasp, a rustle of movement. She pointed her wand and felt the muscles between her shoulders contract. "Who is that? Who's there?"

"Please," came the voice, well-known if it weren't so frail.

"Daddy?" She called. "What are you doing back there? Are you ill?"

"Please," he said again. "Oh, God, _please_ make it stop."

Iphany skipped forward several steps until she could see behind the sofa, could see her father, disheveled, empty-eyed, his face a matted mess of blood and tears. He let out another sob when he saw her, pulling himself up to stand.

"You have to kill me, you have to kill me," he said. "I cannot bear it any longer. I tried to make it stop, I thought if I could touch...could...but it just got louder and louder and now..."

Iphany was not looking at him, nor was she listening. Her eyes were fixed on the body, crumpled up on the rug like a sad old dress. It was a naked young woman with dark auburn hair and freckled skin that was probably lovely when not half flayed. Her legs were wrenched open, eyes still glazed with shock, mouth unhinged in a wordless death-scream.

"Daddy..." Iphany whispered. "What did you do?"


	12. Rise

**Author's Note:**

Okay, he's finally arrived. I do hope everyone is enjoying themselves, and if you are I would love to hear it! Reviews give me life. I'll take praise, criticism, chocolates and Slytherins, in no particular order. Onward!

. . . . .

"Stupefy!"

Iphany lowered her wand and sucked in a breath through her teeth. Icarus slumped over the back of the divan, his bloody fingers brushing the gold silk fringe of a now-ruined pillow.

 _Honestly,_ she thought, _he just_ _ **had**_ _to bring her back to the house._

First she made sure the girl was well and truly dead. No pulse fluttered at the throat, which was already going purple with a necklace of bruises. Iphany kicked the dark memory back down to the cellar where it belonged.

Then she began to methodically heal the scrapes and contusions, knowing that the only reason the spells still worked was because the girl hadn't been gone very long. Once the blood stagnated and turned cold, there was no amount of magic that could erase the damage. She was able to remove most of the blood, return the skin to its original color, knit the severed skin beneath the soft ridge of her mouth, where in her agony the girl had bitten through her own lip.

The flayed ribbons wrapping the girls upper arms and left thigh were not so cooperative. She could not get the skin to grow back together, nor could she Transfigure the exposed muscle to appear whole. While at this point it wouldn't matter if she turned the girl inside out or exploded her, she was, or had been, a living creature, impervious to Iphany's meagre Transfiguration talents.

 _Why am I going through all this trouble?_ She wondered. Why did she care if her father saw punishment for his crime? She could not find the answer, nor did she have enough time to give it the consideration it deserved. She tried a few more charms to get rid of the last wounds, but it was too late now, the blood ran cold.

 _So much for dousing her with whiskey and dumping her behind the pub,_ she thought. _Now what?_

A dozen Aurors in bottle-green robes bursting through her father's study in a violent cacophony of light and noise, that's what. Iphany had about five seconds to summon a thimbleful of tears to gather in her eyes and run sobbing towards the nearest – _oh, not him –_ female in the group.

"I just came in and he was standing over her and I panicked and stunned him I don't know what _happened,"_ she wailed, and if the last word was tinged with a whisper of music that carried a strong suggestion of believing everything that came out of her mouth, well, she didn't know anything about that, did she?

"Shhh, shh, you're all right, love," said the woman into whose arms she had flung herself. "You're safe now."

 _Not likely,_ Iphany thought, glancing briefly over the woman's soft round shoulder to see several of the men gawking at her with open mouths. This was not at all how she had imagined her first encounter with the wider world. She hiccuped and buried her face in the woman's neck.

"She hysterical," someone said. The arms that held her shifted, one of them loosened its hold on her back and retrieved an unseen item.

"Here, darling, this will help," she said. Something cool and faintly sweet touched Iphany's lips, and then she knew no more.

. . .

"Iphany?"

The voice came from underwater, a beam of sunlight pricking her conscience. She shook her head and then heard the voice again, more insistent this time.

"No." Iphany said aloud, rolling over to press her face to the cool pillow. Everything was fine, if they'd just -

She shrieked and thrashed when she felt the hand on her shoulder, popped from under the coverlet and scrambled towards the far corner of the bed. The familiar blue walls of her bedroom swam into focus, followed by the calm-faced woman sitting in a chair at the beside. Her sleep-addled brain struggled over the confusing scraps of information that bounced around in her memory, denying her attempts to force them back together.

"Who are you?" She asked. Her throat felt rough and hot, her limbs flush with shivers. How long had she been asleep? A night and a day, at least. Waves of moon-sickness rolled over her shoulders and tossed her stomach into knots.

"My name is Sapir McElroy," the woman replied. "Do you need something to drink?"

"I need to swim," Iphany replied. Her head began to pound. "Right now."

"Oh..." said the woman, looking confused, then, " _Oh._ Of course. You're...yes, sorry. Can I help you outside?"

"I am afraid you must," Iphany hissed through gritted teeth. Whatever they had given her could have very well killed her if she'd been unconscious another day or two. Bloody Auror idiots.

 _Aurors,_ she thought. _Uh oh._ The memory of their appearance – and her father's crime, began to take shape. But she could not hold on to it, not until she had remedied the source of the nausea and pain battling for control of her body. She let the woman escort her outside, barely noticing the other green-robed witch at the front door, not hearing the low exchange of words that passed between them. Dusk was just beginning to settle a dark blue arm across the horizon, but she did not have time to wait until the moon appeared. She struggled out of the woman's grasp once the cove was in sight, and let out a sigh as soon as she felt the invigorating glide of the water over her skin.

Iphany shed her robe as she waded, ducked beneath the surface and drew in gasps of water that she both allowed to filter through her gills and swallowed in enormous gulps. She swam long enough for the moon to appear, but by then she had regained the better part of her faculties and decided that she would not sing. She did not trust the woman on the shore, with her small blue eyes and unnervingly placid face, a detail of intuition that had escaped her in her previous state.

After an hour she climbed up the rocks and laid herself out for a few minutes, allowing the cold silver glow of the moon to soak into the water still clinging to her skin. When she felt she had absorbed enough of the light to feel normal again, she made her way back to the woman, who was holding out her dry robes, her eyes averted to a scrub of sea grass at her feet.

"Feeling better?" she asked. Iphany slipped the robe on and nodded.

"Yes," she said, then belatedly: "Thank you."

"I've had your Elf prepare some dinner, I'm sure you're hungry," Sapir said. She escorted Iphany back up to her room and sat in silence as she sipped the seafood broth and nibbled carefully at the herb-dusted roll still warm from the oven. When her stomach declared its intention to lie quietly and accept the food, she sat back and regarded the woman.

"My father killed someone," she said. "Was it a muggle?"

Sapir flinched and nodded. Iphany caught the reaction and considered it; she supposed the words had come out too emotionless and cold. She consulted her memory of Madame's sad, haunted eyes when she'd told her the story about the owl, how the memory seemed to play before her like an invisible photograph. She tried to picture her father standing over the ruined body of the girl and felt nothing, but managed to work her mouth into a subtle pout and knit her brows together in what she hoped was an expression of pain.

"A girl from the village, yes. The two of you are the only magic users on the island, so when the ISS committee got wind of someone performing an Unforgivable curse in the vicinity, we were dispatched to investigate. Word in the muggle town was that someone saw a man in gray assault the young woman and then disappear into thin air. I'm sorry, dear, is this bothering you?" She asked.

Iphany had been thinking about how stupid her father was, to break the rules with such obvious disregard. Her face must have contorted in disgust.

"Yes," she said. Sapir nodded and reached out to pat her arm sympathetically. It was all Iphany could do not to cringe away from the gentle touch.

"What happens to me now?" She asked. "He's in Azkaban, I assume."

"Yes," said Sapir. "As for you, well, it's complicated. In the end, it is up to you. We know you were slated to matriculate at Hogwarts in the fall, but that's a good four months from now. You cannot remain here by yourself, being under-age. It is written in your father's will that your Godparents are Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy, but we have secured you a place at the London Centre for Displaced Young Witches and Wizards. We feel it would be a better environment for someone who has experienced -"

"An _orphanage?_ " Iphany asked. "You must be mad. I'd rather join my father in Azkaban. A bunch of sticky Mudbloods pawing all over my nice things, and where would I swim, how would I sing? No, thank you. Though I have never met the Malfoys I am certain anything would be preferable to _that."_

Sapir sat back, looking both stunned and vindicated, as though something she suspected was in the process of being proven. Both of her parents were Muggles, and she'd had more than one dealing with the Malfoys, who respected her authority as an Auror about as much as they respected the autonomy of house Elves. Upon discovering their connection to the girl, she had done her best to give the benefit of the doubt. A futile exercise, so it seemed.

Sapir rose from her seat and dusted her clean hands on her robe.

"As you wish, Miss Novara. I suggest you take this evening to gather your things and ready yourself for a morning departure. I will inform the Malfoys of your arrival."

Iphany knew she had failed some sort of test, but did not care enough to wonder what it was. She finished her dinner as Sapir took her leave, and began the task of packing up her life to begin a new one.

. . .

Once she had all of her things stacked in neat piles next to the fireplace in her room, Iphany went down to her fathers' study. The curtains were still open, and a fire popped and crackled in the hearth, driving out some of the dampness. She sat down at his desk and began opening drawers, searching for something she had seen only once.

She found her quarry easily, tucked into a small oak-carved chest at the back of a drawer. Inside lay several pendants, each a razor-thin slice of blue-white stone that knew no equal in this mortal world. Her mother's necklace, excised and shaped to confer its wards to several wearers at once, protection from her own untested powers. Each was labeled with a different name – Severus Snape, Albus Dumbledore, Flitwick, Flich – and Draco and Lucius Malfoy. These last two she extracted, then wrapped and bound in red silk. She went to the window and opened it to summon Diablo, her father's black owl.

As an afterthought, she took out a piece of parchment and scratched out a quick note to the recipients.

 _By now you will have heard of my impending arrival. My father had these made for you, apparently he believed that this day might one day come. Please wear them always,_

 _Iphany Novara_

She signed her name with a customary flourish and tied the package to Diablo's leg. He blinked his big silver eyes and took wing, nipping at her shoulder with a soft hoot before sailing out into the night.

She sat in the study for a long time, watching the clouds ride the arc of the sky. Her father had given her enough information about her task at Hogwarts, her service to his Master. She did not know what was meant to come afterwards because he had not told her. But the mission lined up well with the long-ago dream of her mother, and the words she had said to her:

 _One day, you will bring us the most powerful human man, and we will have justice._

She had a part to play in whatever journey the fates were weaving, and it was a path she would follow. It had not yet occurred to her that the way had been chosen for her, that she had no voice in the matter, no will of her own. Only the dreams of others drove her, lent her purpose, compelled her feet to move and body to comply. She did not yet know that her mind and body were her own.

But soon, she would find out.

. . .

"Malfoy Manor!"

Whirling, verdant green, a rushing like wind in her ears, and suddenly Iphany felt herself pitching forward. She landed on her knees on hard, unyielding stone. As she regained her senses she struggled up, finding herself face to face with not one, but two extraordinarily ugly house Elves.

"Mistress Iphany!" Blat cried, clapping her hands to the sides of her face. "Is you alright? You is not hurt? I will -"

"Shut up." She spat, rubbing at her knee with one hand. The second Elf was a good bit larger than Blat, but it possessed the same irritatingly nervous manner. He wrung his knobbly hands together and began speaking very quickly.

"We is so pleased you is arriving, Mistress Iphany Novara. I is going to tell my Master you is here, he is waiting for you downstairs, Mistress Iphany. I-"

"Well, go on then," Iphany interrupted, glancing about to get her initial look at the room. The ceilings were shy of fifteen feet high, beamed across with polished oak. Green and white silk draperies hung from the rafters, a precursor to matching décor. Plush couches in the same shades of emerald and ivory flanked the fireplace, and on either side of the room hung huge sneering portraits of the Lord and Lady of the Manor.

While Iphany was examining the room, Blat had wandered to the large marble tea-table and was fiddling with a china bowl carved of hundreds of entwining green snakes. Iphany turned in time to see her lift the bowl from the table and inspect it with appraising, stupid eyes. She felt her Mistress' gaze upon her and looked up, gasping as she set the bowl down.

But she missed by a good two inches. The bowl clattered to the floor; fortunately it did not shatter, but Iphany shouted all the same.

"Damn you, Blat," She said, darting forward to seize the Elf by her ear. "If that had broken, don't think I wouldn't have snapped your fingers." Blat shuddered and whimpered, begging forgiveness while driving her own balled fist into the side of her head. Iphany let go of the Elf and drew a breath to unleash another tirade, but was stopped by a shadow and a voice from the door.

"Welcome, Miss Novara," came the rich and shivering baritone, "To Malfoy Manor."


	13. Contralto

**Note:**

A brief reminder again that this story is only canon-compliant up to GOF. I started it after GOF came out, so while there may be some updated references that jive with 5-6-7 for the most part it continues where GOF left off. (Personally I never much cared for the prophecy aspect of OOTP; Voldemort never got a chance to hear the rest anyway. And I didn't want to try and factor in Lucius having been to Azkaban in this rewrite as I feel like the humiliation he experienced and the disappointment that Voldemort had drove the Malfoys' plot further in 6&7, which doesn't really serve any purpose for me in this story.)

Also, I said that any old fans of the story would not find anything too different here. I am a liar.

Big thanks to **zara_skye** for my first review! It means the world to me!

Thanks to my Horcrux Shasha for proofing this chapter.

. . . .

When Iphany stepped through the fireplace and vanished in a swirl of green flame, the image reflected in the large silver-black pearl flickered and faded. Otilde released it and looked to her sisters.

"That's it, then," she said. The house on the hill was dark; no heartbeats sounded within the empty halls: his broken and vague, hers a brilliant, delirious tattoo.

"Do you think she is ready?" asked Alba. She rested her chin on Otilde's shoulder and wrapped her arms around her sister's waist.

"Of course she isn't," said Renali. "But it doesn't matter now."

"I do wish we could communicate with her," Otilde sighed. "The only way would be if Ilia's enchantment fails, and if that happens we will have far greater things to worry about. She learned as much as she could while she was here, and she will continue to learn—as long as she doesn't stop singing again. She may even begin to develop Ilia's gift of sight."

"But we won't know she succeeded..."

"Until she brings the dark one here," Otilde confirmed. "I still see her returning to us. Nothing has changed."

"I miss her already," said Alba. "Her sweet little voice..."

Even Renali nodded at that. As much as Iphany was a child of Otilde's lineage, Renali saw much of herself in the girl. She was determined and loyal, even to the father who had betrayed her over and over again. When—if—Otilde's visions proved true, Renali knew she would love to get to know her beyond the echo of her spirit-song whispering over the waters of the cove. Despite her doubts, Renali wanted to believe they would all be reunited; wanted it more, perhaps, than the revenge that weighed down every thought and dream in her mind.

"Waiting is not in my nature," she said. "Isn't there anything we can do?" The suggestion in her voice was as subtle as a knife wound. Otilde turned to face her, noting the gleam in Renali's eyes.

"We don't even know where she's gone," said Alba. "And besides, it's been at least a hundred years since we tried shifting. The power could be waning, it could be gone."

"It could be," said Renali, lips turned up in a secretive smile. "But perhaps it isn't."

. . . .

Iphany released Blat's ear and cut her eyes over to the man standing at the threshold of the hearth-room. Another figure hovered behind him, smaller and slighter, obscured but for the cut and flare of a feminine-looking set of robes. She glanced down at her own attire—a plain, nondescript knee-length robe in soft dove-gray, smeared liberally with soot and ash from the fireplace. Her white stockings were in even worse shape.

Blat, for all her bumbling ineptitude, also noticed her mistress's disarray and snapped her fingers; the smudges and streaks disappeared, and Iphany felt her hair tug in a few spots as it reshaped itself into a neat braid down her back. In the dozen or so steps it took for Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy to approach her, she allowed herself to sink down into the song that scored her waking thoughts. The default melody, as she had come to know it, was the aria of her spirit: staccato notes beating solemn and cold, a trill of anger in pianissimo, the harmonic dissonance of humor skewing dark on most occasions. Beneath that ran the supportive current of her Siren blood-song; irresistible, alluring, inescapable. It was these chords that she focused on, softening the husky resonance until it was a distant echo. The song had taught her much about herself, had bid her to practice this control. Now she would find out if it really worked.

"Lord and Lady Malfoy," she said, dipping a half-curtsey. "Thank you for taking me into your home."

"Anything for the daughter of an old friend," said Lucius. "I am sorry to hear about his...incident."

Iphany could not tell if the smirk that touched the warm curve of his mouth was mocking or commiserative, but his choice of words informed her exactly how he felt about her father torturing and murdering a Muggle. She kept her face even and turned her gaze to Narcissa. The woman was beautiful, with the same pale gold hair and complexion as her husband's. They might have been related, for how much they looked alike. However, Narcissa regarded her with a cool, even stare, and Lucius seemed to be searching her face for something he had not realized he was missing. Iphany drew herself up under the weight of those aristocratic eyes and tried to smile.

"He was foolish, I am still unsure what came over him," she said. "But it doesn't matter now. I intend to impose on your hospitality as little as possible. I am used to being alone, so if you wish to pretend I am not here, it will cause me no injury."

Yuck, she mused, Why am I talking like this? Probably because they both look like they fell out of the family tree and hit every royal branch on the way down. She would be glad if they left her alone, but a surprising thorn of longing scraped against the edge of the thought. Lonely, sighed the errant refrain. Narcissa's eyes softened, as though she had heard the truth beneath her formal words.

"Nonsense," said Lucius. "We are your godparents. To treat you as anything less than one of our own would be beyond our capacity to allow." He extended his hand to her. She shook her head and, without thinking, took several steps back.

"I shouldn't," she said, and when Lucius raised his dark brows and the softness fled from Narcissa's eyes, she continued. "I don't mean to offend. I do not like to be touched." That sounded much better than repeating her fathers' warnings against the dangers of allowing any man within a yard of her. Lucius dropped his hand and inclined his head.

"My apologies," he said. "Shall I give you a tour?"

As unpracticed as she was at reading the facial expressions of strangers, Iphany could sense some hesitance in his offer. She shook her head and in her periphery saw Narcissa's shoulders drop a few centimeters.

She doesn't want me alone with him, Iphany surmised.

"No, sir. Thank you. If the elves could just show me to my room, I'd like to get settled in. I don't suppose there is any water on the grounds?"

"There wasn't," said Naricissa. "We've charmed a pond near the back of the property." She forced a smile that did not appear overly friendly. "I've been after Lucius for years to add it, and I suppose I just needed to borrow a Siren to make it finally happen."

A rush of annoyance lit Iphany's nerves. She decided right then that she would be turning the majority of her attention on the Malfoy matriarch; if anyone had the power to make her stay unpleasant, it wouldn't be Lucius or Draco. Speaking of...Iphany started to ask after the whereabouts of the youngest Malfoy, but thought better of it.

"However it came about, I appreciate it," she said. She watched as Blat popped in and out of the parlor, taking a trunk or a suitcase with her at each disappearance. When the last of her luggage was gone, Iphany motioned for the elf to come to her.

"I'll just go up now, if it's all right," she said. Being in a room with two whole people at once made her feel like someone had taken hold of either of her hands and was pulling her as hard as they could in opposite directions. She wanted to stay; she wanted to ask Narcissa where she'd gotten than beautiful robe, she wanted to tell Lucius she liked the shape of the hearth and the color of the sofas, she wanted to run up the stairs and lock her door and never come out.

"Of course," said Lady Malfoy. She sounded relieved.

"But you'll join us for dinner," said Lucius.

"I—yes," she said. Iphany was about to argue when she realized it wasn't a request.

She caught his eyes and then looked away, feeling a strange warmth creeping up the back of her neck. "I'd be delighted."

. . . .

"You were rude," said Lucius as soon as the girl's footsteps faded. He rounded on his wife and fixed her with a withering glare.

"When have you ever cared about that?" Narcissa replied.

"When my Master is concerned, I care about everything. 'How was your time with the Malfoys, Iphany? Oh, rather awful. Narcissa treated me like I was a muggle in Knockturn Alley.' I'm sure he'll be willing to overlook any unkindness she reports. And when he asks you why, what will you say? You were jealous? You thought she was going to steal your son? Your husband? What will he do to us, Narcissa?"

Narcissa narrowed her eyes and glanced over Lucius' shoulder at a spot on the wall. He grabbed her chin with a gloved hand and forced her eyes to meet his.

"You will be pleasant and accommodating," he said. "Treat that girl like the daughter you always wanted, or so help me—"

"You'll what?" Narcissa pulled her face away and took a step back. Lucius could see the storm brewing in her face and found himself wishing, not for the first time, that his wife was as committed to the Dark Lord's service as he was. She did not understand; she never had. A Malfoy always chooses the winning side, he'd told her. Her argument that it had not worked out so well for them last time earned her a backhand that shocked more than it hurt.

"It is not my reaction that you need to worry about," Lucius said, noting that she flinched when he spoke, expecting or remembering the blow. But the weight of his words was enough to scatter the clouds of anger in her eyes. She twisted her mouth into a sardonic smile and gave a mocking curtsey.

"As you wish, Lord Husband."

. . . .

Iphany let out a long-held sigh. She flung herself onto the king-sized bed draped in tongues of lavender and cream. The room was much larger than her own at home—lavishly decorated, bearing floors of gleaming ivory marble instead of wood. A full balcony offered a spectacular view of the grounds. Iphany glanced out the window and flinched. How strange it was to see gently rolling hills and sculpted gardens instead of luminous sand and cobalt waves!

She crawled off the bed and approached the glass, pressing her palm against the smooth, sun-warmed surface. Across the hills, behind a shaded copse of trees, she could just make out the glint of water. From what she could tell, it appeared to be roughly half the size of her cove. As long as there was privacy, it would suffice. Her skin was already itching for the feel of water, but the fear of encountering one of the Malfoys after an outdoor swim squashed that thought before it could go much farther. A bath, then.

The bathroom, like the sleeping chamber, did not disappoint. A stone bathing pool, large enough for several teenage Sirens, was sunk into the center of the room beneath a large skylight that let in plenty of sunshine. She still did not care much for daytime, but had to admit that the aesthetics of the marble room, with its large armoire full of soft, cedar scented towels and gorgeous collection of colorful glass-bottled washing potions, was greatly enhanced by the golden glow of afternoon.

She spent the better part of two hours lazing in the tub. The bath energized her in the same manner that a nap would a normal person, so when she lifted herself grudgingly from the steaming vat of rose-scented water, she felt measurably better than she had in the last twenty four hours. Blat presented a soft gray robe and a towel to wrap her hair, after waving away the water that dripped and puddled at her feet.

She ventured back into the bedroom, humming to herself. While Blat rummaged around in her trunk for a change of clothes, Iphany noticed the vanity in the corner of the room and decided to sit down and look through the drawers.

She glanced up at her reflection - and gasped when the gilt-edged mirror burst into sobs. At first she wasn't sure where the awful noise was coming from, but quickly ascertained its origin upon noticing that the glass itself was trembling. What she did not know was that her mother ensured every wizard-enchanted mirror in the Novara Estate was replaced with normal glass for this very reason. The disembodied voice wailed on and on in an ear shattering keen until Iphany draped one of her winter robes over the frame.

The entire incident terrified Blat, who thought it was Iphany who was crying, so she started to howl at the top of her lungs and would not stop until Iphany took her by the shoulders and shook her.

"It wasn't me, Blat," she shouted over the elf. "It was that stupid mirror!"

"Oh Mistress Iphany Novara, Blat was so worried," the elf said through a bout of hiccups.

"Well stop that," said Iphany. "I'm fine, see? Everything's all right."

She paused, frowning, and looked down at the elf, whose wonky little face was streaked with tears and relief. She felt...odd. Like she cared if Blat was upset or not, cared beyond the aggravation it caused. Alarmed, she backed away and pointed at the door.

"Go...um...go find those Malfoy men and make sure they're wearing their amulets," she said. Blat blew her nose noisily on her dingy brown shift and nodded.

. . . .

By the time Blat returned it was nearly nightfall. Iphany ushered her in with a wave of her hand and an exasperated what took you so long. She was trying to decide between two new robes: a blood-red ensemble with black lace filigree and a gentler, more casual affair in foamy, pale jade. She had never seen either of them before but assumed they were

Blat's doing, at her father's request. Perhaps she was meant to save them for...Him.

"Which one?" she asked, shoving that thought aside. Blat eyed them both and motioned to the green one.

"This one, Mistress, it is the same color as your eyes."

Iphany shrugged and slipped out of her bathrobe, allowing Blat to help her with the complicated laces at the back of the dress. She held out her arm and examined the long, bell-shaped sleeves. Small diamonds rimmed the interior fabric, and they caught the light of the westering sun as she turned her arm this way and that.

"Are you sure? This seems awfully fancy." The only time she dressed up for dinner at home was when her father requested her presence, and even then it was only in black or gray. He did not like when she wore anything else.

"Wizard families like the Malfoys always dress up for dinner," said the elf. "Blat remembers when Mistress Iphany Novara's mother was still alive, and she wore these robes many times."

Iphany stilled and placed her hands on the fitted bodice.

"These...were my mother's?"

Blat peered from around the side of Iphany's leg and gave a hopeful, trembling smile.

"Master Novara told Blat to get rid of them. Blat put them up in the attic instead. Blat had to slam her toes in the door seven times to make up for it, but Blat knew that one day Mistress Iphany would want to wear them."

Iphany swallowed around the hard, hollow ache in her throat. She wished she had a mirror. There was a part of her that wanted to rip the robes and stuff them back into the trunk. The part of her that wanted to sew them to her skin and never take them off was much larger.

"Well done," she said. It was several minutes before she could get Blat to stop whimpering her gratitude into the hem of the fabric, but she was finally interrupted by a soft knock at the door.

"Mistress Iphany Novara," came a squeaking voice, "It is time to come down to dinner."

"You stay here and see about replacing that awful mirror," Iphany told her elf. The last thing she needed was something mooning over her while she tried to suffer through what would surely be an awkward affair. She quickly removed the velvet tie holding her braid in place and shook her hair out until it fell in loose, tumbling waves around her shoulders. The elf knocked again.

"I'm coming," She shouted back. She stepped into the flat green slippers that Blat laid out and opened the door.

"Yanna is sorry to be bothering you, Mistress, but Lord Malfoy doesn't like to be kept waiting," said the elf when Iphany stepped out into the hallway.

"Lord Malfoy and my father have that in common," she replied. A flutter of nervousness tickled her belly. "Let's go."


	14. Ensemble

LOVE THE REVIEWS. Keep them coming, they give me life!

. . . .

There was nothing of warmth or welcome in the Malfoy family dining hall. Despite the fire in the hearth and the impressive iron chandeliers that hung over the long, ebony wood table, every gothic carving and fixture seemed designed to absorb light rather than be revealed by it. Iphany winced at the improbable echo of her flat-heeled slippers on the polished floor, and was glad when she reached the relative padding of the Oriental rug.

"Kind of you to join us, Miss Novara," Lucius drawled. He rose from his seat and must have kicked the leg of Draco's chair as he passed behind it. The younger Malfoy scrambled up, his narrow face a mask of incredulity. Iphany met his eyes and he looked away at once, blanching pale and wide-eyed. Narcissa remained seated, one hand in her lap while the other clutched the stem of a pewter and crystal wine goblet.

"Thank you again for inviting me," Iphany said, her voice coming out far less strong and assured than she hoped. Lucius pulled out a chair next to Narcissa and bid her to take a seat. She complied, thanking him as he slid her chair closer to the table. He resumed his place at the head and snapped his attention to Draco.

"Draco," Lucius barked. "Where are your manners?" There was a hint of amusement in his voice.

"Hey," Draco said. He looked up at her again, shuddered, and smiled.

"Hey," Iphany replied. She returned his awkward grimace as Lucius dropped his forehead into his palm with an irritated sigh.

"Close your mouth, Draco," said Narcissa. She still had not looked up from her plate. Desperate to alleviate the weight of her own presence, Iphany turned to the woman and cleared her throat.

"You have such a lovely home, Lady Malfoy. My room is exquisite, and the view of the grounds is wonderful. I think I'll be quite comfortable here."

"Oh, _good_ , _"_ said Narcissa. "Yanna, serve the first course, please."

The elf scurried out of the corner and tapped his fingers on the table. Iphany looked down to see her soup-bowl fill with a rich red broth dotted with vegetable and – _uh oh._ She disguised her gag as a polite cough into her napkin as the scent of stewed lamb assaulted her nose. She and meat had never gotten along. Her father had tried to force the issue when she was smaller, ignoring his own first-hand knowledge of her mother's intolerance for anything warm-blooded. After a while he gave up and kept his own diet while catering to her preference for vegetables and seafood. Of course nobody had bothered to pass that piece of information along.

Or perhaps they had. Iphany reached for the roll on her bread plate and caught a glimpse of Narcissa watching her from the corner of her eye.

 _I'm not after anyone!_ She wanted to shout, feeling the burn of anger start to simmer in her chest. Not only that, but she was starving. She finished the roll in three impolite bites and steeled herself to try the soup, just to prove that she could. But when the spoon approached her mouth and the smell hit her anew, her fingers released it of their own accord. The resulting crash of silver on china and the splash of crimson broth fetched everyone's attention.

"Is our fare not up to your standards, Iphany?" Lucius had the gall to look offended, even though Iphany was well aware he probably did not even know where his kitchen was. She shook her head.

"It isn't that, sir. I don't—I can't eat meat. I'm sorry, I should have said something sooner, or had my elf tell yours."

"Yanna," said Lucius. "Did you not think to inquire as to Miss Novara's dietary restrictions?" He seemed colossally annoyed by the entire affair. Iphany was about to defend the elf, but the incongruity of caring was alarming enough to keep the words behind her teeth.

"Blat told Yanna, sir, and Yanna asked Mistress Narcissa if he should change the soup, but Mistress Narcissa said -"

"That's enough," Lucius said, holding up his hand. The elf returned to his place beside the hearth and started pulling at his ears. Narcissa set down her spoon, drained her wine in one long gulp, and started to stand up.

"I am not hungry anymore," she said.

"Sit. Down," Lucius replied. Draco was watching the whole exchange with an expression of sudden interest as Iphany contemplated crawling under the table. "What's for seconds, or dare I even ask?"

"Baked trout," Narcissa replied. Lucius rolled his eyes and dabbed his mouth.

"Clear the soup, Yanna," he said. Draco started to make a noise of protest but was silenced by half a turn of Lucius' head in his direction. The elf obeyed and the offensive dish was replaced by wide oval platters bearing whole fish on a bed of scalloped potatoes. Iphany heaved a sigh of relief and took up her fork.

"So you're starting at Hogwarts this year," Draco said after a moment. He still would not look at her, but at least _someone_ was talking. Iphany nodded and spoke around bites of trout.

"So I have been told. Do you enjoy it? I've been taught at home for so long I can't imagine what it must be like." She took a sip of water, wisely masked her disgust, and tried to be discrete about adding salt.

"I wanted to go to Durmstrang," he replied. "Mother wouldn't have it. Says Hogwarts is safer."

"Not for everyone," Lucius interjected. Iphany looked up and caught the end of a dark grin sliding off his mouth. "As long as that old fool is still Headmaster, Hogwarts will continue to cater to mudbloods and cowards. But no matter, all will be remedied soon enough."

"You mean when I snag that Potter boy and bring him to Voldemort," Iphany offered. Draco choked and had to push back from the table. Perhaps they did not talk strategy at dinner? Iphany was accustomed to discussing murder and mayhem in the same way that she described her progress with schoolwork. She made a mental note, based on the reaction, to review her thoughts more closely before speaking.

" _If_ you snag that Potter boy," Lucius replied. "Your father had great confidence in your ability to do so, but are you prepared? Do you know enough about him? He is surrounded by friends and supporters, many of whom will not be as susceptible to your abilities."

Iphany bristled and straightened up in her seat. Not susceptible indeed. She glanced down at her silverware to disguise the concentration it took to peel back the layers of control she had over her more persuasive powers, and after a moment or two she looked up at Draco.

"Eat that fish head," she said. Draco dropped his fork, took the trout's head in one hand, and popped it between his teeth with a loud, squelching _crunch._

"Stop that!" Narcissa shrieked. She jumped up from the table and rushed around to Draco's side, grabbed his face and yanked the fish out of his mouth. Lucius remained impassive as he sipped the amber liquid in his snifter.

"Nothing that a clever Imperio couldn't do," he said. "And not very subtle, either. Oh sit _down,_ Narcissa. Stop being so dramatic. It isn't going to kill him."

"Darling, are you all right?" Narcissa asked as she patted Draco's back. Red-faced and glaring, he shrugged her away.

"I'm fine," he said through gritted teeth. Narcissa hovered behind him, her expression careening between fury and fear. Before Iphany could apologize, Draco shoved himself out of his chair, snatched out his wand, and pointed it at her.

"Petrificus -"

" _Protego!_ " Lucius shouted. She hadn't even seen him draw his wand, but his was the spell that held. Draco's jinx ricocheted off the protection charm and bounced up to hit the chandelier; it swayed hard enough to extinguished several of the candles in their glass holders. Iphany let out a small scream and covered her head with her hands.

"Are we all _quite finished?!"_ Lucius roared. Everyone froze and looked at him; the chandelier slowed and the smell of wax and smoke drifted down over the table. Iphany bit her tongue, sucked in her cheeks and clenched her fists. It wasn't enough. Laughter burst out in a long, loud, inappropriate cackle. She covered her mouth and doubled over in her seat as tears spilled out beneath her lashes, waiting for the inevitable chastising.

The rebuke she anticipated did not come; instead she heard Lucius' eloquent baritone chuckle rising up to meet hers, followed by the sound of Draco snorting into his fist. She peered between her fingers and grinned, dimly aware as Narcissa turned an apoplectic shade of purple and stalked out of the dining room.

"I'm sorry I made you eat a fish head," Iphany gasped. This brought on a new round of laughter as Lucius and Draco resumed their seats. Iphany felt immediately more comfortable, as though some portended storm had decided to pass her by.

"It's all right," said Draco. He was back to avoiding her eyes, but his expression was one of cautious respect rather than anger. "I'm going to get you back, I just haven't decided how yet."

The amicable challenge brought both a thrill and a sudden wave of resentment. Her father had denied her friendship, camaraderie, the simple pleasure of youthful deviance. Nobody had ever bothered to enjoy her company before. They were either paid, in the case of her tutors, enslaved like Blat, or utterly indifferent, as her father was.

"Will you be my friend?" She asked Draco, unaware of how pathetic the words sounded until they met her own ears. She blushed furiously and stabbed at a potato.

"Sure," he said. "Wanna go out after dinner and try out my new broom? It's a Cyclone m-"

"I don't think so," said Lucius. Iphany glanced over at him, her anger returning. The laughter had fled his eyes and he was glaring at her in silent, cold appraisal. She shivered, but wasn't entirely sure why. The lighthearted moment had passed, and in its place the invisible wall around her took shape again, fortifications renewed.

 _You can't have friends. You don't deserve friends,_ came a hateful voice in her mind. She felt her body wither into itself and her song descend to an inaudible whisper. _What was I thinking?_

Dinner commenced without further incident. Lucius engaged his son in a discussion about the summer Quidditch schedule and his plans to sojourn to the regional finals in Italy with someone named Blaze, who apparently had a very good-looking mother. Her appetite sated, Iphany began to feel the first stirrings of sea-longing, though the desire fizzled when she remembered she would be swimming in a charmed pond rather than the cove. She hoped it would be enough, but suspected it would be like drinking water to quench a thirst for wine.

After a while she excused herself, ignoring Draco's furtive glance of something like longing as she thanked Lucius for dinner and asked him to pass her apologies on to Narcissa. He waved her off with a negligent hand. She did not notice the other one, balled in his lap beneath the table, nails digging bloody crescents into his palm.

. . . .

 _At least the moon still loves me._

It was the first coherent thought she had as she stepped out of the pond and settled on the neatly trimmed grass. It was much warmer here than in Shallycob, and there were almost no clouds to hide the stars from view. The gathering of trees around the water made her less self-conscious about lying naked beneath the open sky, but the proximity of the house and the lighted windows made her pull on her damp under-slip after only a minute or two.

 _So quiet,_ she thought, her ears ringing in the absence of crashing waves. Something else was missing, too; she could not name it, could not place it beyond the sensation of a deep sort of itch or ache in her bones. She rubbed her hands vigorously over her thighs, reminded of the dream she had about her mother so long ago.

 _She took something from me._

Iphany stood up and blew out an impatient breath. It would not do to muck about in a past she could not remember. It had only been a dream, after all, a lonely little girl's dream. She gathered up her dress-robe and flung it over her arm, not ready to put it back on while the warmth of the moon still lingered over her skin. A cobbled path led back to the house, through the low blooming night-jasmine and roses. Their fragrance seemed rich and exotic compared to the acrid scent-memory of salt and sand. She paused and plucked a crimson bud from the rose bush and tucked it behind one ear.

Once back inside, the thought of going to bed did not once cross her mind. Wandering around aimlessly wasn't much of an option either, as she could only imagine what Narcissa would do if she caught Iphany cavorting about the manor in a half-soaked slip in the middle of the night.

It occurred to Iphany that this place ought to have a library, and probably one far grander than the one at home. She glanced about for a house Elf -

"Can I help you, Mistress Iphany Novara?" Squealed a voice at knee level, and Iphany glanced down.

"Yes," She replied, squinting in the darkness. "Take me to the library."

Yanna nodded and skittered down the hallway, touching walls as he went to make the oil lamps cough and sputter to life. Iphany followed in silence, grateful that until she learned her way around, there'd be an elf to show her the way. The Malfoys trained their servants well.

She opened the heavy door the elf indicated, pausing a moment to admire the carvings and silver snake-molded knobs. In here, the lamps were already partially lit and a fire blazed in the hearth. Another mark of good service - somehow they'd known she was coming, and had been clever enough to prepare the way for her. Most the ring of illumination only breached the center of the darkness, leaving the rest of the room to pool in shadow. But the shelves were bursting with books, leather-bound with glittering spines. Some lay open on tables, places marked by silk ribbons, a stack of parchment and a charmed quill scratching out notes as the pages turned of their own accord.

One in particular caught her eye, a pristine volume of "Mystical Creatures and their Questionable Origins" all the way up on the fourth shelf. Frowning, she recalled that she'd left her wand on the dresser upstairs. No matter. She climbed up on the first two sturdy shelves, hiked up her skirt so it wouldn't snag on the corners, then perched on her knees on the third shelf, legs arranged just so beneath her to keep her from falling.

Lucius Malfoy watched, transfixed, from his chair just outside the ring of light. When she'd first come in, he'd had every intention of announcing his presence. But before he could speak she drew the damp skirt around her thighs and in a few nimble movements was balanced on the shelf. He could see the muscles of her legs shivering ever so slightly from the strain, the fire-lit outline of her body beneath the slip, the damp frenzied splay of midnight hair plastered against her back. She was _glowing,_ for God's sake, as though she'd managed to carry a bit of moonlight in on her skin. His pulse blistered in his throat as he called out a rough, trembling warning:

"Get out of here."

Iphany yelped and pitched off the self, her landing significantly less graceful than the ascent. Her tailbone met the wood floor with a painful thump.

"Hey!" She shouted, indignant. "I was -"

"Out!" Lucius bellowed. He advanced on her, an elegant beast charging out of the shadows. Iphany cringed at the expression on his face, a mixture of rage and –

He snatched her by the shoulders and hauled her up to stand, ignoring the screaming protest that his body expressed. Instead he dragged her across the room, shoved her out into the hallway, and slammed the door as hard as he could.

Stunned, she did the only thing that prey can do when faced with a predator – she ran.

Lucius leaned his head against the door and listened to the wet slap of her receding footsteps. His entire body shook like it was coming down from the rush of narrowly escaped peril. He thought of the necklace, tucked in his dresser drawer, removed after dinner as he had not expected to see her again. It had been bad before, but tolerable as long as he didn't look at her for too long.

 _What did I get myself into?_

He could send her away, perhaps, to stay with Avery for a while. Then he snorted - Avery would stand about as much of a chance as Draco would when it came to ignoring her. There was always the summer home in Sweden, he could -

Suddenly, the orange glow cast by the fire glazed a bright green, and Lucius turned in time to see Lord Voldemort's head appear in the fire. He was off to the hearth like a shot, kneeling before the fireplace in reverence and humility.

"Lucius. How is she?" Voldemort began, making no excuses for the reason behind his appearance. Lucius smiled and hid his quivering hands behind his back.

"All is well, my Lord. She is impetuous, just like her father, and will likely need more guidance before we unleash her on Potter, but she has all the markings of success," Lucius reported, a smile touching his face at the memory of Draco chewing on a fish head. He hoped against hope that Voldemort would not sense his agitation, the arousal that still pounded against his defenses.

"Tell me, Lucius - she is beautiful, isn't she? I've not yet seen her in person, Icarus advised against it, but he showed me an Imago once, when she was younger."

"You will not be disappointed," Lucius replied. "There are no words to describe her."

"Keep your hands off my pet," the Dark Lord said with a smirk. "I'd hate to lose you too."

The implicit threat lingered long after the fire burned yellow and orange again.


	15. Faolieag

Sorry for the delay, friends! Lots of dumb life stuff, plus I'm doing fewer minor language tweaks and more massive re-writing now. I know this fic is somewhat (heh) of a slow burner, and is less in the Harry Potter world as it is Harry Potter _inspired._ So if you're looking for lots of familiar faces, hang on, they're coming! But this is still Iphany's story, and it's still egregiously AU, so just keep that in mind. I do promise that if you stick with me (and you're a Lucius lover, or at least a fan of May/December romances) your patience will pay off in droves.

Still with me? Leave a review if you're feeling sassy! (or any other type of way!)

. . . . .

The door swung shut and the arc of light from the hall disappeared.

"You must be utterly mad," said Narcissa. Lucius heard the minute rustling of silk on cotton, the whisper of skin beneath the sheets. She gave a soft, disembodied sigh.

"You are my wife," said Lucius. He stalked across the bedroom and swept the curtains aside. Narcissa sat with her back against the headboard, a heavy book open on her lap. An oil lamp flickered on her bedside table, limning her lovely, pale face in the shadows of age.

"Your wife, not your concubine," she said. "Go stick someone else, I'm not interested."

Lucius sat down on the side of the bed, surprising her by not arguing. From the corner of her eye she could see that he was trembling very slightly, and his usually strong shoulders were rounded in defeat or shame.

"Is this about the girl?"

Narcissa turned the page of her book and kept her face composed.

"Yes, Lucius. It's about the girl."

"You're being absurd," he said. "You're a grown woman. Jealousy is unbecoming, especially for a Malfoy."

"Jealousy," said Narcissa. She slipped her reading glasses down her nose and fixed him with a withering stare. He felt himself flinch beneath the cold blue weight of her eyes. "Jealousy? Is that what you think? You think I'm jealous of her?"

Lucius had the good sense to look confused. "Aren't you?"

"No, you idiot," she said, but there was no venom stinging the whispered words. "I'm not jealous. I am terrified."

"I highly doubt she is a threat to you, Narcissa. And if it's Draco you're worried about, it was -"

"It's not her," she said. "It's _Him._ And what he expects of her – of us. What happens if she fails? Who will he blame? Not Icarus, rotting in Azkaban. I have seen what happens to the ones who displease him."

"It will be her failure, not ours," Lucius said. "He will not -"

"He will not make a distinction," Narcissa said. "I assume you told him you would make certain she was ready?"

Lucius looked down at his hands and did not respond.

"After the diary, I knew we were in danger. But you managed to scrape out of it, like you usually do. And your connections with the Ministry have helped him forget the mistake, for now. But he will remember it swiftly if she is not successful. And how will he hurt us? How will we be punished?"

"She will not fail, Narcissa," said Lucius. He reached out and his hand hovered over her leg, and when she did not resist, he settled the weight of it on her thigh. It felt strange, his body turned at an awkward angle, his wife composed and regal and aloof; tolerating, but not enjoying his touch. He wanted to say more, felt an urge to comfort her, to tell her she was wrong to worry. But he would have to convince himself first.

In the end she allowed him into her bed, allowed him to slip beneath the comforter, allowed his strong hands to skim her hips, her breasts, her throat. His mouth found hers in the dark, but she kept her lips sealed and did not return his kiss. When it was over he dressed in silence. She slipped her robe back on and returned to her book. Had he turned around as he said good night, he might have noticed the soundless tears spilling out of her downcast eyes. But he did not turn, so he did not see.

. . . . .

Morning came with a dull gray light and the distant suggestion of rain. Iphany had slept a few hours beneath the waxing half-moon, waking just as the sun struggled to break through the heavy sky. She stared up at the gathered velvet canopy, tracing the patterns of embroidered dragons that chased each other around the fabric. In her fitful sleep she had kicked all the covers off, but the Malfoys kept their hearths ever burning, unlike at home. She'd gotten used to the chill of stone and the constant wind off the tempestuous sea, and anyway, the cold did not seem to bother her the way it did others.

Eventually she rolled out of bed and regarded the unfamiliar room. Blat had tidied up while she slept; her trunks were stowed inside the cypress armoire, brushes and clips laid out on the vanity. The mirror remained silent when it caught her reflection, showing only a pale-skinned girl with sleep-mussed black hair and a wrinkled nightdress.

Blat popped out from under the bed and scurried behind Iphany as she let herself into the bathroom. The house elf puttered about as Iphany brushed her teeth and combed the snarls from her hair, then helped her into her day robes. She told herself, rather sternly, that it was silly to miss her mother's beautiful dress robes, that her black and gray ones were sturdy and serviceable and who was she trying to impress, anyway?

She expected the house, despite its size and opulence, to feel less empty than hers had. But it did not. No sounds greeted her as she stepped out of the bedroom, no sounds but her own breath and movement, and Blat's calloused feet on the rugs and stone.

"Where would Mistress Iphany Novara like to go?" Blat asked.

"Breakfast, I suppose," said Iphany. She was following her routine, like a marionette timed to dart around the circumference of a cuckoo clock, popping out of her little doors to tweet a canned melody on an impotent painted horn. Eight o'clock, breakfast. Lessons at nine. A walk at eleven, then lunch. Back to lessons, tea at three. Change for dinner, eat alone or with her father. Walk behind the path of evening, shedding clothes, dipping her toes into the water. Sleep to the relative phase of the moon. And on, and on, and on. This new freedom, such as it was, seemed too vast to consider, too infinitely full of possibilities. Best to stick to what she knew, and to deal with those who crossed her path as nothing more than stones splitting the current of her course. She followed Blat through a series of torch-lit corridors, averting her gaze from the pale-faced portraits whose icy eyes followed the stranger roaming the halls. They finally reached a set of french doors recessed into an alcove. Blat tapped out a pattern on the whorls of carved wood and the doors swung open.

The breakfast room was walled with windows open to a panoramic view of the back gardens. Several small tables were dressed in white linen, set with silverware and plates and glasses for a party that never began. Iphany positioned herself near the door, so that she could hear if there was anyone else wandering about in the manor. Once her mistress was settled, Blat disappeared for a few moments, then emerged from a small side-entrance bearing a tray of food. She set the plate of grilled tomatoes, mushrooms and fried bread down in front of Iphany, and then poured her a cup of pink-tinted breakfast tea that smelled strongly of roses.

"This is lovely," said Iphany, after sampling the tea. Her father had never suffered the presence of anything other than a stout darjeeling, even though he rarely drank it himself. This brew was crisp and fragrant, with each sip tasting like a garden warmed by the afternoon sun.

"Lady Malfoy grows charmed roses, Mistress. She has them added to the tea," Blat explained. Iphany raised her eyebrows; roses were a fickle flower when it came to magic, Madame had once told her. Attempts to fiddle with their growing process often resulted in stunted blooms or thorns as long as throwing knives. It seemed a an uncomplicated magic, but it spoke volumes of Narcissa's ability, however frivolous the application.

She tucked into her breakfast and finished off the pot of tea, which had been brewed just as strong as it was at home. Iphany wandered over to the windows when she was done, and upon looking down at the garden she noticed a plum-robed figure weaving in and out of the flower bushes, passing a wand over the sun-starved blooms, shedding an umbra of soft yellow light.

Narcissa must have sensed that she was being watched, for she paused in her ministrations and turned quickly to face the upper windows. Iphany ducked down and scurried towards the door, feeling as though she'd been caught out at mischief. She shook her head at her own silliness; what did it matter that Narcissa had seen her? An unwelcome heat slid up the back of her neck, coupled with a faint wave of dismay sloshing around in her belly. She wanted Narcissa to like her, and had absolutely no idea _why._

She shook herself to clear the fog of contemplation and straightened up. Blat had cleared the breakfast table and waited by the door.

"What would -"

"Blat, where are Lord Malfoy and Draco?"

"Yanna tells Blat that Lord Malfoy has gone out for the day and Draco is back at Hogwarts to finish the last week of his term. Lady Malfoy is -"

"Tending her garden," Iphany finished. "I'd like to explore, Blat. _Alone,"_ she added, when the house elf's ears perked up. The subsequent droop and shattered expression was almost enough to make Iphany regret her words. Almost.

It took a string of several sharp words to send Blat slinking back to the chamber by herself, and her theatrical sobs made Iphany cringe into the empty hallway.

 _If I don't explore on my own, I'll never learn my way around,_ she reasoned, the thought rising to argue with the feeling of embarking on a forbidden venture. But nobody had told her _not_ to wander, and if this was to be her home for the next few months, they could not very well expect her to keep to her rooms and the dining chambers. She was used to being confined to estate grounds, but her leash could only be pulled so tight. She would go mad pacing her room. Sirens were not meant to be caged.

 _Neither in body, nor spirit,_ came the errant thought, but it buzzed out of reach before Iphany could give it further consideration. With no real destination in mind, she picked the first door that she came upon, and let herself inside.

She found herself in another hallway, lined again in portraits, these of Malfoy women instead of men. Narcissa's glared at her, first in the queue. Iphany scuttled past it as quickly as she could, concentrating on the new set of doors at the end of the windowless antechamber. She moved between twenty generations of Malfoy wives, each painted stare striking her retreating form like the tails of a whip.

 _Get out of our house,_ they seemed to say. _You do not belong here._

She was glad to leave the hallway behind her, slamming the door a bit harder than strictly necessary as she let out a sigh, the sound transforming into a low whistle of amazement. An improbably palatial ballroom stretched out before her. Green marble floors gleamed with a severe mirrored polish, so clean she could pick out each individual vein of quartz forking through the jade-colored tiles. She looked up to a concave ceiling charmed to resemble a clear, cloudless night sky, complete with a fat opal moon hanging in spotlight at the apex of the dome. The echo of a shiver traced her skin; the image was so detailed that she reacted as though it were real. Her body tensed, muscles contracting in preparation for a swim.

Instead, she succumbed to a sudden childish urge, gathered her skirt in one hand, and waltzed in a large circle. Her eyes drifted closed as she swayed to the melody in her head, steps a staccato drumbeat that resounded until the entire room was filled with the rhythm of her lonely dance. She saw the sea on her eyelids, roaring with the fevered pulse of a squall, whitecaps crashing on the rocks outside her cove. And then, without pretext, the vision changed. She saw a dark-haired man in a velvet half-mask, his eyes a blue so deep it might have been black, save the contrast of a silver halo ringing the circumference of his pupils. His hand was on her waist, he drew her close enough to perceive the thunder of his heart beneath a brocaded vest. She breathed in the smell of him; wine and cologne, tinged with the barest hint of fear.

She stumbled, releasing her skirt as she thudded to her knees. It took a few moments for the pain to pierce the haze of her vision, so that when she hissed between her teeth it was delayed beyond the duration of the ache.

Iphany stood up, her forehead creased with a frown.

 _Where did that come from?_

The thought landed just as a sound caught her ears; though whispery and faint, it was unmistakeable. Someone, somewhere, was crying. She listed towards the door through which she had entered, but found that the sound faded; so she crossed deeper into the ballroom and detected a minute rise in pitch and strength. She followed the voice, drawn by some invisible string, through an eastern corridor,

down a flight of stairs - around a corner, through a hall of diamond chandeliers - louder and louder and more pitiful grew the sound.

She was out of breath and hot with adrenaline when she reached the iron door at the bottom of a staircase. Iphany descended warily, realizing that as she drew closer, the crying stopped and she could hear a shuddering intake of breath as whoever —whatever—was behind that door recognized the sound of footsteps.

She reached the bottom, curiosity rising to a fever pitch. She lifted her hand to the latch and—

"Iphany," came a voice from the top of the staircase. She froze, noting that the crying fell silent at once.

"Lady Malfoy," Iphany said. She trotted halfway up the staircase and gave a bemused shrug. "I got lost."

"Did you?"

Iphany skipped up the remaining stairs and joined Narcissa at the threshold, hoping that her features displayed the proper amount of self deprecation.

"I've never been outside my own home, you see. I thought I could make my way around without Blat or Yanna, but I guess I was wrong."

"Clearly," said Narcissa. "While you are here, I suggest you remain in the East wing, in your rooms or the library. This house is full of twists and turns, and it does not take kindly to snooping."

"I wasn't _snooping,"_ Iphany shot back before she had the sense to temper the heat of her tone. "I was exploring."

"Semantics," Narcissa said. "You'll do as I say, girl."

"Of course, Lady Malfoy," Iphany replied. She dropped into a curtsey, keeping her eyes averted to avoid meeting Narcissa's. Did she have to be so obvious in her dislike? There must have been some trust, some love there between their families, for the Malfoys to agree to be her Godparents. It seemed so petty.

Narcissa appeared to reconsider her approach, for when she spoke again a tenor of forced politesse ran beneath her words.

"I wouldn't want you to get hurt," she said. "Even I do not trust every stone of this place, and I have lived here nearly twenty years."

"Thank you for your concern," Iphany said. She hated the raw, truthful sincerity in her voice. She sounded weak and desperate, even to her own ears. Narcissa caught her upper lip between her teeth for a moment before nodding.

"Oh, I did so enjoy my tea this morning," Iphany said. She finally dared to meet Narcissa's gaze, and offered a soft, hesitant smile. "Blat told me you grow charmed roses. That's quite a feat. My tutor once told me it wasn't worth it to try and use magic on roses, they always come up wrong. You must be a formidable witch."

"I get by," said Narcissa. A smile, thin as the crack in an eggshell, threatened to break the hard line of her mouth. It seemed that like most humans, Narcissa was not impervious to flattery. But the expression was gone in an instant, and Iphany felt herself shrinking under the chill of the older woman's appraising stare.

"I'll be going, then," she said. Like a tic she could not control, she found herself curtseying again. "Sorry if I bothered you."

"Dinner at eight tonight," called Lady Malfoy.

"I will see you then," Iphany replied, and then she dashed away.

. . . . .

At six o'clock, just as the sun began to draw down some of the ruthless late afternoon heat, Iphany heard a knock at her door. She nudged Blat with her foot, slid a ribbon between the pages of her potions textbook, and scooted forward a bit in her wine-hued reading chair. Her bottom was numb from sitting so long, though she could not recall a single thing she'd read.

Blat opened the door to Yanna, who bowed repeatedly as he entered the room.

"Yanna apologizes, Mistress, but Lady Malfoy asked me to inform you that dinner will be served in your room tonight," said the elf. Iphany looked down to see her hands twitching with repressed anger.

"And why is that?"

"Lord Malfoy will be staying in London, and Master Draco is finishing Hogwarts, and Lady Narcissa-"

"Doesn't want to be stuck at a dinner table with me," Iphany interjected. "Not surprising. Well, bring it up in an hour, and make sure there's no meat this time, would you?"

"O-o-of _course,_ Mistress Iphany Novara. Yanna will be certain this time, Yanna would never want to displease a guest of the illustrious Malf-"

"Carry on," she said with a wave of her hand. So Lucius had gone to London - for what purpose, she wondered. From her father's passing mentions of the family, she knew that Lucius and the Minister had something of an arrangement, that it was his connections with the Ministry, backed by the strength of his name, that made him an invaluable tool of the Dark Lord. Likely he was there on some manner of nefarious business related to this arrangement. Likely it had nothing to do with the perplexing incident in the library the previous evening.

She put her book aside and unfolded herself from the chair. As soon as she stood, the visions she'd been trying to avoid—the dark-haired masked man, his warm hand on her shoulder, his mouth curved up in a smile, and the lonely broken sound of crying behind the iron door— filtered back into her mind, quick to obliterate all attempts at focusing her attention elsewhere. She could not decide which was more disturbing; one so vivid it seemed as real as a memory yet to be made; the other thick with faceless, unseen sorrow.

There was no denying it. She'd have to try and find the mysterious prisoner again, if for no other reason than to satisfy the rebellion and curiosity rising in equal measure. Narcissa could not watch her all the time, could she? At some point, the woman had to sleep. Iphany did not; at least, not until the new moon dragged her down into the long and dreamless night.

After a blessedly meat-free supper of vegetable roast and hearty bread, she waited until the sun set and went out for her evening swim. This time she did not hold her voice back; with no men in the manor she did not fear drawing unwanted attention to herself, so she relished the glorious freedom felt only in these few precious hours, where all thought fled and she was only the sum of her song and the sky.

Usually her mind fell blissfully quiet when she spent time in the water. Tonight each note renewed the vision of her dancing partner, seared against her lids in a tableau so vivid that even when she opened her eyes a ghost of the image remained.

It was this, and not a desire to leave the water, that drove her out of the pond much sooner than she would have liked. She tucked herself into her day robes, wand dried her hair, and stuck her slippers under one arm. The ground beneath her bare feet was warm with the memory of the sun, and if she blurred her mind a bit she could pretend it was sea-grass and sand instead of peat-soil and a lush, manicured lawn.

The manor loomed over the back gardens, all eyes shuttered and dark with the coming of evening. All except one; and if Iphany had to guess she would say it was the dining hall, given her recollection of the enormous arched windows that had no equal anywhere else in the house. She glanced at the moon and considered the time - it might have been half past nine. And was that Narcissa, sitting all alone at the end of the table, scowling at the empty chairs? Iphany stilled at the center of the path, trained her attention on the glow and the warmth behind the windows, and listened. Her swim-sharpened hearing caught the woman's throaty, clipped voice with ease, and while she could not make out the words, she could tell that they were conversational, rather than some directive barked at a house elf. Had Lucius or Draco returned?

She drew closer to the window, ignoring the voice reminding her that she'd only just gotten caught snooping earlier that afternoon. Narcissa's voice grew louder, and while she still could not hear much, one word shot through the thicket of nighttime noises: Siren.

The answering voice was decidedly male, though neither Lucius' nor Draco's was quite so low and grating. Iphany reached the verge beneath the window and carefully rose up on her toes to peer over the tangle of leaves and ivy. She saw the line of Narcissa's long neck, the glitter of diamonds in her ears, and a slope-shouldered man with thinning ginger hair.

And then came the last sound she ever expected to hear in this place: the high, tonal cry of a seagull split the sky and drowned out the muted voices. Iphany dropped behind the hedges and spat out a curse that would have earned a bug-eyed screech from Madame.

When no accusatory shouts followed in the handful of heartbeats that passed, Iphany realized that the thickness of the walls and glass inside the manor probably made hearing anything outside of them close to impossible. And now that she looked, the improbable source was so high up in the air that human ears might not have even detected the call even if they'd been standing just where she was. It was her sensitized hearing that made it seem so loud.

But that did not explain what in Merlin's name it was _doing_ here. Iphany weaved her way out of the hedges and stared up at the bird, who had begun to wheel in descending circles, drawing closer and closer until she felt the wind of its passing wings and heard the click of web-toed talons as it landed in a flurry on the path ahead of her.

As gulls went, it was magnificent, enormous, snow white but for a spate of midnight feathers at wingtip and tail. It stood in the exact center of the stone walkway, just a few meters from the back door, its proud head cocked as one bright yellow eye seemed to stare directly at Iphany.

"Er," she said. "You're a long way from home."

The gull puffed out its feathers and clicked its orange beak, as if to say, _so are you._

Sometimes at home she would make a game of swimming after the small fish that found their way into her lagoon, catching them with lightning-fast hands, and tossing them up to the birds that circled overhead. Gulls were not stupid creatures - had this one managed to _follow_ her, expecting the handouts to continue?

"I don't have any food for you," Iphany said. "Go on, go back to Shallycob, or wherever you came from." She shook her skirt at the gull, expecting it to react as they usually did, by taking wing and catching the wind to ride away from this large, loud, featherless bird. But it did not. It continued to stare at her in that wordless, unnerving way, cocking its head this way and that, feathers still ruffled and shivering in the gentle night breeze.

"Look, if you're here tomorrow, I'll bring you some bread," Iphany said, fully aware that she was having a one-sided conversation with a creature that routinely got itself eaten by sharks. A response was, to put it mildly, unlikely. She took a few menacing steps forward, shaking her skirt again.

This time the gull did take flight, but instead of letting out an indignant squawk and flapping away, it leapt into the air with a quicksilver elegance and emitted a high, mournful cry that made a tide of gooseflesh erupt over Iphany's arms and neck. She watched as the gull flew, with evident purpose, up towards the eastern tower, where it settled on the ledge of a balcony.

 _That's my room,_ Iphany thought. _How does it…_

The gull cawed again and jerked its orange beak at the window. Either Iphany was going stark raving mad, or that damned bird was telling her to go to her room.

 _Nope,_ she thought, _Definitely going mad._

But she went inside anyway.


	16. Fledgling

Both the man and the gull returned the following night.

"You again?" Iphany asked. Her balcony doors were open, curtains caught up in brass hangers and tied off to invite the most amount of moonlight. The seagull made a strange silhouette as it stood on the railing with one foot tucked up into the white down of its body, preening an outstretched ebony-tipped wing.

"I suppose I _did_ promise," she said. "Stay there." The gull switched to the other foot and did not reply.

Iphany opened one of her vanity drawers and pulled out half of a dinner roll wrapped in a linen napkin. She began to pinch off pieces of it as she approached the balcony.

"Sorry, no fish," she said. "The lady of the house hasn't tried to kill me with lamb again, but she is rather stingy." Dinner had been vegetables again, a bit of rice, and the bread. Breakfast was a repeat of the previous day, lunch and tea were the same. Everything was expertly cooked and seasoned, and Iphany took little pleasure in eating, anyway, but she felt the absence of her usual diet in a lightheadedness and longing, however primal, for the cold slip of a raw oyster or a thick slab of smoked salmon.

The gull stood on both webbed feet and stopped grooming as she came forward, eyeing the proffered bit of bread with a cocked head.

"Go on," said Iphany. She held her hand out, bread dangling between her forefinger and thumb. The gull craned its neck to reach, then snapped up the morsel and tossed it down.

"More?" She pulled off another piece and pitched it, marvelling as the bird performed an impressive aerial turn to grab the bread in midair. She continued feeding it that way until the bread was gone, then dusted the crumbs off her hands and stepped outside to join her new friend.

"You make me miss home," she confessed as she folded her arms over the railing. "I suppose I could Floo over, but I'd have to ask Countess Pointyface to lift the ward off the fireplace. I guess it was a one-time thing, letting me come through. The Malfoys don't want anyone popping up unannounced while they're planning to overthrow the government or some such nonsense."

The gull did a hop-turn so that it was facing out, too. Iphany turned to look at it, and it mirrored her gesture.

"You're a funny thing," she said. "I mean you lot are pretty bold, but you usually have enough sense to scarper once you know the food's gone."

The gull clicked its beak in agreement or rebuttal, and Iphany laughed.

"You could go get us some fish, you know," she said. "I mean, I'm stuck here, but you're not." She considered the idea for a few moments. It would be grand, to have no other worries besides the mood of the wind and the satisfaction of hunger. Just sailing along wherever she pleased, alone or in a flock, bothering humans for scraps or plucking fish right out of the ocean. She'd seen gulls shoot into the water like arrows from a bow, emerging mere seconds later with huge silver trout or gasping pink salmon. She'd always wondered how deep they dove, how keen their eyesight must be to pick out the flash of scales in the vast, ever-moving sea.

She was distracted from her reverie by a splash of house-light spilling into the garden below, and the emergence of two figures from the door. With eyesight still fresh from her swim and aided by the unobscured moon, she could see it was Narcissa and the red-haired man, walking the path from the house to the flower bushes.

The gull hopped closer to her, and to Iphany's surprise, stretched its neck out and brushed her bare arm with the edge of its beak. Then it hopped away and turned to face the house with a small, urgent caw.

"You want me to go inside?" She asked. "I want to see what they're up to. Besides. You're a bird."

The gull cawed again, still soft enough that she was sure only she could hear. This time it tapped her elbow - _hard -_ with the business end of its beak.

"Hey!" she said. "All right, you bully, I'm going!"

She did not see the man and woman turn, a few seconds later, to make sure she was not watching them.

. . . .

"Yes," he said. "Yes, this'll do nicely."

Manglis MacAullen knelt in the soil and stroked the star-shaped blossom hidden behind an array of rainbow tulips. It would be easy to miss the vedonia bush; the blooms, though large, were a plain shade of pink overshadowed by the rest of the garden.

"It's the right kind?"

"The only kind that will do," Manglis replied, showing his yellow teeth. Narcissa resisted the urge to vomit and returned the smile instead.

"Lucky you, of the dozens of types of vedonia, you happened to be growing the only one that can make this potion work on a Siren," he said. "How the fates align."

"I would have preferred they align in a way that never brought her across my door, but this will have to suffice," Narcissa replied. She kept quiet as the stringy-haired man inspected the blossoms further, his dull black gloves coming back dusted with a vermillion powder. Guilt swelled behind her ribs, making it difficult to breathe. Iphany was, after all, a child. It was not her fault that her father went insane, not her fault that Lucius had aligned himself with a man who made enemies and allies alike wish for a bottomless pit to avoid the consequences of his displeasure.

It was not her fault, but she would bear the weight of it regardless. The fact that she had no mother to mourn her passing made the doubt and regret bearable. Just.

"Will she…" Narcissa swallowed the spike of shame in her throat. "Will she suffer?"

Manglis selected a flower, retrieved a tiny glass phial from a satchel at his waist, and with methodical precision scraped a few grains of the pollen inside. He stoppered it with a plug of blue wax and handed it to Narcissa.

"Not much," he said nonchalantly as she tucked the phial into her sleeve. He offered another rusty smile. "Unless you want her to."

"I'd rather not. She's a consequence of her circumstance, and while I do not trust any creature that is not wholly human, she is still but a girl. An innocent."

Manglis hacked a glob of spittle onto the ground and kicked a clod of dirt over it.

"Innocent my arse," he said. "The MacAullens were right powerful before those ocean harpies took my great great grand-uncle and the laird finally fought back. He wiped 'm out, but they got the last laugh. You don't curse a whole line for Squibs, not a line like MacAullen, and get away with it. You're doing a great thing, my Lady, turning this girl over to me. Not only will her blood restore the power what we lost, but I'll make a mint selling her hair for wand cores and her skin and bones to the Knockturn brewers. Next time we see each other I bet you won't be able to tell me from that fancy husband of yours." Manglis winked suggestively and waggled his sparse brows. "Always had an eye for ye, lassie. When this is done you look me up, I'll thank you proper."

"I believe it shall be the other way around," Narcissa replied, amazed that she managed to get the words out without choking. Manglis leered and blew his pocked, red nose with a wet-sounding snort.

"Just remember, only brew it by moonlight, an hour at a time. Takes three days to make a batch if the moon is less than three quarters, two if you're doing it right before it's full. I need her when it's full, you got me? So end of the week if you haven't done it yet, you'll have to wait."

"I will send an owl once she is incapacitated," said Narcissa. "You'll have to be ready to come at once. I cannot risk this going wrong."

"Oy, I'll be here. Even with the right vedonia it won't keep her down for long. I'll have to get her throat cauterized before she wakes or that'll be the end for me. Best to get her tongue, too, although -"

"That's enough," said Narcissa. "I don't need to know the details."

"Don't suppose you do," said Manglis. He doffed his threadbare cap and smirked.

This time, Narcissa could not even pretend to smile back.

. . . . .

Later that night, when Narcissa had gone to bed and Iphany received the all-clear from Blat, she put on her house slippers, grabbed her wand, and went exploring.

She found the ballroom easily enough. It was even larger and more grand than she remembered, and without daylight battering the windows the perpetually full moon illumined the marble floors in a silver-green corona. Standing in this false spotlight she closed her eyes, searching for the vision of her partner, but after several minutes found nothing but the memory of his mouth shaping words she could not hear.

With that experiment a failure, she turned her thoughts to the hidden room and its miserable unseen occupant. It should have been through the door set back into the western wall, which should have lead to the chandeliered hallway and the stone staircase descending into shadows. Should have, but did not. When she opened the door she found nothing but a small water closet and her own confused face staring back from the center of a (blessedly un-charmed) mirror.

"Stupid house," she said aloud, though as soon as the words met her ears she knew it wasn't the house she should be blaming. If there was one thing Iphany was exceptional at, magic-wise, it was being able to detect the presence of charms meant to confound or confuse. She stepped back and regarded the edges of the door frame, noting the faint milky haze running along the angles of the wood.

"Got you," she said, before aiming her wand. "Finite Incantatem!"

Instead of dissolving to reveal the true corridor, the shimmer of magic around the frame began to glow a hard, accusatory red. A hum radiated from the compromised ward, oscillating between a deep bass and an echoing tenor.

"Whoops," Iphany said. "Bugger it all, I'm dead. Blat! Come here!"

The house elf popped into view at Iphany's knees and immediately clapped her hands over her batlike ears.

"You did this," Iphany said. "You were trying to get to the kitchens and you got lost."

"But Mistress Iphany Novara, Blat _never_ gets lost! Blat -"

"You did it," Iphany said. "Understand? Yanna will probably be here any second. You tell him you did it, and make sure Lady Malfoy knows."

Blat nodded, her saucer eyes wide and pitiful. Iphany gave her a smile, and without thinking, patted the top of her wrinkled head.

"You're a decent little elf," she said. Then she turned heel and shot across the ballroom.

When Yanna arrived, Blat stood alone at the door, and she was sobbing in such ecstatic gratitude that he could barely understand her. So he took her hysteria for sincerity, quickly silenced the angry hex, and led the smaller elf back up to her Mistress' room.

. . . .

Narcissa dabbed her slick forehead with a handkerchief and leaned over the bubbling cauldron. She consulted her directions again, pointed her wand, and coaxed the silver liquid to spin in precisely three and a half clockwise circles.

Yanna materialized behind her, recognized the strain and concentration on his mistress' face, and wisely waited until she had stepped away from the potion to speak.

"Yanna found Blat at the door to the dungeons, Lady Malfoy. The warning spells were going off. Blat tells Yanna she was trying to find her way to the kitchens to get a snack for Mistress Iphany Novara, and got herself lost. Yanna knows Blat was lying."

Narcissa nodded and slid her wand into the belt of her robe.

"Good," she said. "When the time is right, I'll go down and dissolve the Confundus and the Silencing charms. You'll keep Blat occupied."

"Yes, Lady Malfoy," said Yanna. He paused for a few seconds, his gray forehead seamed with a reluctant frown. Narcissa ignored it - she would not have herself judged by a bloody house elf. Not for this. Not ever.

When Yanna was gone, Narcissa returned to the potion.

"You'll find out what's down there," she whispered to the image of the black haired girl in her mind. "And you'll wish you hadn't."

. . . .

After half an hour, when nobody came charging through the library doors shouting obscenities, Iphany settled back into Lord Malfoy's reading chair with a sigh. The hearth simmered scarlet and gold, giving off just enough dry heat to wick the humidity out of the summer air.

Iphany summoned the book she'd failed to retrieve on her first trip to the library. As it floated down into her outstretched hands, her mind lingered over the rage in Lord Malfoy's face, the kinetic violence in his arms, the broken roar of his usual silk-and-steel baritone. She pulled a grimace and flung the book open. Those Malfoys were a moody lot.

Despite the foreword, which proclaimed that every known non-human creature was catalogued and documented within, the book had a paltry five page entry on Sirens. There was little she did not already know, either from her father's reluctant explanation or the research she'd done on her own. But one passage caught her eye, and beneath it a blurry photograph of three human-like figures caught in a mid-dive arc between a jetty and the sea.

 _This is the only known and verified photograph of Sirens, taken by a Muggle with his camera in late winter of 1979. It is believed that these are the last three Sirens, at least of the archetypal variety. Some scholars theorize that without human-bred progeny, the once-immortal Fey daughters of the moon and sea will begin to age and eventually perish from the world. This conjecture brought about a renewed interest in the creatures, particularly those who work to maintain the populations of endangered magical beasts._

"Stop calling me a _creature,_ book," said Iphany. She leaned into the firelight and examined the grainy picture. She knew them, knew what their voices sounded like at midnight carrying promises and laments across the water. Their faces, glimpsed but once before she was old enough to understand, were less familiar; yet she had no doubt that she could call each one by name should they stand before her today.

"Is that why you want me?" She asked the image. A fingertip traced the curve of a back, bowed with the magnificent grace of the dive. "Not just for revenge, but for survival?"

And then a great thought came, so loud and demanding that it drowned out every other clamour in her mind:

 _What do I want?_

"I don't know," she whispered. She slammed the book closed.

. . . . .

Iphany spent every night in the library that week. It was the only time she felt she could ignore the question she had asked herself, the one that now refused to be silenced until it had an answer. She found herself staring out of windows, tripping over her own feet, forgetting to bring a spoon all the way to her mouth, trailing off in the middle of a sentence, turning round in circles as she tried to remember whatever it was she'd been doing only moments before.

 _What do I want?_

So she read. She read greedily, frantically, like a dying man who is told each morning upon awakening that this day will be his last. She slept less and less in the days leading up to the full moon, foregoing what meagre sleep she usually got during the last week of the lunar phase. Her dreams were of one subject: she stood naked in the center of a room, surrounded by faceless people, all pulling some part of her body in a different direction. She awoke each time with a gasp and the _clang_ of some distant mental gate slamming shut. Her heart wanted to race with fear, her palms waited to go slick with sweat, she swallowed a lump in her throat that was not there.

And so she read. Potions textbooks, tomes of runes so ancient that the crumbling pages had to be turned with a feather, books of nursery rhymes, books of common country curses, books about breaking common country curses. An entire shelf about the theories behind the phenomenon of Squibs. Were they cursed? Were they born that way? Was it merely mental, as some suggested, or entirely physical, as others believed? She read until her eyes were dry and stinging and her fingers dull with rubbed-off ink.

 _What do I want?_

"Oh shut up," she told herself. She was sitting on the balcony with her face to the stars, watching the seagull strut back and forth across the rails. She had seen nothing of Narcissa in the last few days, and had begun to wonder if she too had left the manor.

A knock on the door fetched her attention. The seagull puffed its feathers and trilled an inquisitive caw.

"Iphany?"

Narcissa's voice was softened by the door, stripped of its usual chill. Iphany looked at the seagull, half-expecting it to explain why Lady Malfoy would be knocking on her door this late at night.

"Come in," she replied. She pulled herself up and went inside to open the door, but found Blat already turning the knob.

Narcissa wore a rich red dressing gown, pale hair loosely arrayed over narrow shoulders. Iphany imagined she saw her own exhaustion mirrored in the older woman's features. But most astonishing was the fact that she carried a tea tray with her own two hands.

"I wanted to speak with you a moment," Narcissa said. She crossed the parlor and set the tea tray on the table, and once it was settled she lowered herself onto the velvet divan. Iphany hovered at the perimeter of the room, unable to keep the incredulity off her face.

"Okay," Iphany replied. "What about?"

"Would you sit with me a moment?" Narcissa asked. Iphany shrugged and sat down in the opposite chair.

"I have not been kind to you," Narcissa began. "I have thought of ways to rid myself of you, to be perfectly honest, and I've nearly acted on some of them. But I come to you tonight...in peace, I suppose. I may not like the events driving our paths together, but it isn't your fault."

Iphany pressed herself back in her chair, too astonished to speak.

"I do not like any of this. My husband's family has always been the type to align themselves with whatever power seems most likely to afford them the privileges they have come to expect, regardless of who is hurt in the process. They are a loyal bunch, but only to themselves. I was very young when we married. I didn't understand the implications of this attitude. Tea? It's the rose brew, the one you said you enjoyed."

"Oh," said Iphany. "Uh, sure."

An faint little ember kindled in Iphany's chest. She did not dare consider what it meant, or question why it assuaged the persistent thought looping around in her head. Instead she watched in silence as Narcissa poured them each a cup of tea.

"Cream and sugar," said Lady Malfoy, nodding at the ceramic bowls resting on the tea tray. Iphany plopped in a cube of sugar and drizzled a bit of milk in her tea as the self-stirring spoon swirled it all together.

"So…" Iphany wrapped her hands around her cup and breathed the floral smoke. "So you came to-"

"I'm not entirely sure," Narcissa replied. "But I've had a lot of time to think, and while that isn't always the best thing for me, this time I managed to come 'round on the other side and realize how foolish I have been. Whether I like it or not, your failure is ours now, and so is your success. I want to make sure you're prepared to do what He asks of you. Will you let me help you?"

A chill skated the length of Iphany's spine, and was quickly followed by the impression that something had been chipped away inside of her, some ancient corner of grime cleared away from the window separating her from the world. The room waxed imperceptibly brighter.

"Yes," Iphany said. Her cheeks were aching with the unfamiliar weight of a smile. "Yes, I'd like that."

"Splendid," said Narcissa. "Drink up, it tastes much better before it starts to cool."

Iphany raised the cup to her mouth and inhaled the smell of roses. Her lips touched the gold-edged china and she tipped the cup back, but before even a drop of tea could reach her tongue, the room erupted in a seismic avian shriek.

The gull shot in from the balcony and collided with her shoulder hard enough to send the teacup spinning out of her hands. She watched with detached horror as it toppled end over end in a slow-motion fall to the stone floor, then shattered into a thousand pieces with a tinkling crash.

Narcissa scrambled out of her chair, spewing her own tea everywhere as the gull circled the ceiling and dove down to attack.

"What is that thing _doing?!"_ She screamed. Her arms were aloft and bent over her head to protect herself from the battering wings and beak.

"Hey!" Iphany shouted. "Hey bird! Stop! Stop it!"

Narcissa gave a few more half hearted swipes before remembering her wand. She unsheathed it so fast that Iphany did not have time to react, did not have time to protest as she leveled it at the bird and shouted:

" _Avada Kedavra!"_

The gull stopped mid-cry and hit the stone with a sad, unimportant _slap._

"You killed it," Iphany whispered. Her hands were trembling.

"Of course I did," Narcissa snapped. "It was trying to kill _me!"_

She aimed her wand and the limp white body rose from the floor in a pathetic imitation of flight. With a negligent flick, she sent it out the open balcony doors. A single black pinion feather caught the edge of a breeze, considered the idea of dancing, then simply drifted down to the floor. Iphany crossed the room and retrieved it, to Narcissa's _tsk_ of disgust.

"You're going to catch a disease," she said. "Wild birds are filthy."

But Iphany was not listening. She was examining the feather, holding it up to the moonlight, noting that it was not merely black, as she had assumed, but a shifting ebony skewing cobalt and cerulean when the light hit it just so. A blank, eerie calm stole over her. She ignored Narcissa's strident remonstrances and went to her mirror, where she held the feather up to her hair. The match was so spot on that at first glance it was impossible to discern where the feather ended and her own hair began.

"You are being very odd," came Narcissa's voice. Iphany blinked a few times to clear the fog, then tucked the feather inside her vanity, where she had stored the bits of food she shared with the gull.

"I am tired, Lady Malfoy," she said. "I would like to go to bed now."

"But our tea," said Narcissa. Her features took on the forced softness of someone who is being made to suffer the presence of a person they deeply dislike. "Don't be bothered by that mad old pigeon. We were having a chat, and a lovely one. Don't you want to -"

"I want to go to bed," Iphany said in a vague whisper. Then, again, a bit louder. "I want to go to bed."

Narcissa froze. Behind her, in response to a nonverbal spell, shards of fine bone china cobbled themselves back into the shape of a gilt lined teacup.

"I did not mean to upset you," Narcissa said. She spit each word with such force that they may as well have been one long, sibilant hiss. Iphany shook her head and dragged her mouth up into a smile.

"You did not, my Lady. I am only tired. I had a long swim today, I need to get some rest."

Narcissa looked down at her hands and fidgeted with the onyx signet ring on her left pinky. A high blush colored her cheeks and her mouth was a fault line in grave danger of collapse. She took a shallow breath.

Then, the fight drained out of her eyes and she gave a gentle sigh.

"Another time, then," She said. "I'll leave you to your evening."

Another wordless spell saw the individual pieces of the tea set pirouetting back into place on the tray, and the entire collection levitated, following Narcissa on an invisible tether as she bid a soft 'good night' and let herself out of Iphany's room.

Alone again, Iphany heaved a dry, choking sob and bolted for the balcony. The empty ache behind her ribs (where she had begun to suspect she had no heart, maybe just some rusty gears clicking towards entropy) was nearly as alarming as sadness might have been, had she any notion what sadness felt like. The hollow throb pulsed with the rhythm of her breath as she bent over the side of the railing and peered down at the heap of ivory feathers on the flagstones below.

She remembered another bird, a sparrow in a cage. A small brown thing, unexceptional, obsidian eyed and visibly nervous. She recalled Madame's disgusted scream, the wet _pop_ of feathers and flesh.

 _I didn't feel_ anything _then,_ she thought. The wind tousled her hair, breathed just a hint of life into the dead gull's feathers.

 _I feel something now._

. . . .

 **STV News, Edinburg Station, Ten PM Broadcast**

A Muggle woman with spectacularly teased hair adjusted her notes and practiced her "Welcome Back!" smile as the camera operator counted down.

 _Two...one, and -_

"Our last story tonight comes out of the ehm - the isle of - ah, yes, Shallycob, which is just west of Lewis and Harris in the outer Hebrides. Apparently this evening the windward side of the island was swept by what our meteorologists call a rogue wave - the phenomenon usually describes an unusually tall wave or series of waves in the open ocean, often following a storm. This one, however, hit a wee bit closer to home."

The image cut sharp to a man in a yellow slicker with the lapels turned up to repel some of the misty rain. A gruff, bespectacled chap stood behind him, doing his best to avoid the camera lens while the anchor tried to get him back in the shot without being seen. In the further distance lay a washed out cove and the skeleton of what must have once been a grand and glorious manor-house.

"We was just setting out to 'is mother's place on South Uist, road's washed out so we was taking the skiff, an' this wave come up like I never seen in me life. Tall as that old house, she was, an' makin a sound like somebody - couple of somebodies - screamin' in voices that weren't any kind of human. Pharaig heard it, didn't ye?"

" 'Spose I did," the older man grumbled.

"Damndest thing," said the man in the yellow raincoat.

At the profanity the broadcast swiftly cut back to the coiffed young woman. She thanked her viewers and said good night, and offered a small word of gratitude that the old estate house destroyed by the wave was empty at the time of the incident.

. . . .


	17. Sotto

I expect to go a bit longer between updates now as I am including more action in each chapter as we finally get into the meat of the story.

Thank you all so much for reading - it warms my heart to watch the traffic stats and know that at least some folks out there are sticking with me! I'm always open to comments, criticism, abject hatred, flowery praise - anything that will help me improve my writing!

. . . . . . . .

When visiting an inmate at Azkaban prison, one must bring two things if they hope to ever see the sun again.

The first is a Patronus charm that can deflect the black desire of a thousand Dementors at once, without the benefit of being refreshed, as wands must be surrendered on entry.

The second is one's happiest memory. It is a cost most are unwilling to pay, which is why so few, even those who can manage the first part (and then jump through the required hoops set up by the Ministry) ever visit the prison of their own volition. Perhaps the inmates would fare better with more frequent contact with friends and family, argue those in favor of more humane treatment of prisoners. Perhaps the requirements should be softened. After all, not every prisoner is there for murder and mayhem. Perhaps only the third happiest memory, or even the tenth. Could that not suffice?

But Dementors cannot be persuaded to accept anything less, despite many failed attempts by advocacy groups to do just that. Every few years, a fresh upstart in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement will mantle the cause, and every few years he or she will return a little sadder, a little greyer around the eyes and temples.

Lucius was prepared to return to the place that still reared up in his nightmares now and then. Not because he wanted to - it had been a herculean feat to keep the sweat from popping up on his brow when the Dark Lord instructed him to check in on Icarus. While Voldemort sneered at the idea of Patronuses, and it was widely believed that no Death Eater possessed the softness of heart to conure one, Lucius had spent enough time in Azkaban himself to know that even the cruelest person had some light to give, and the Dementors would find it in the end.

The happiest memory was harder to reconcile. He remembered all they took from him last time, how Narcissa could not - would not look at him for months after his return. Later she told him it was like being around a dead thing wearing her husband's skin. That was when they began sleeping in separate beds. His nighttime screaming dwindled over the years, the life returned to his eyes and mouth, he began to hold himself up again. Life went on, as it tends to do. Most of the time he could forget his stay in the prison all those years ago during the First Wizarding War.

But standing at the gates, staring up at the wraithlike figures weaving over the iron walls, he wondered if the last sixteen years had been a fever dream in the moments before dying. When Icarus' cell opened, Lucius would see his own wasted body huddled in the corner in a pile of skin and rags and despair.

The doors swung open on silent hinges, and a frigid breath of air surged out with the force of a well-cast hex. Lucius stumbled a few meters, clenched his jaw until it ached with determination, and walked back into Azkaban.

. . . . .

"Ah," said Icarus Novara. His face broke into a smile so warm that Lucius found himself flinching. "Enter, and welcome, my old friend. Sorry about the neighbors, I've put in a complaint with the housing board." He winked at the hooded Dementor hovering near the entrance.

 _It hasn't even been two weeks,_ Lucius thought, bewildered. _He's gone completely insane_ ** _already_**?

"You'll have to excuse me, I've nowhere for you to sit," Icarus said with a rueful smile. "Although I don't expect you'll be here long."

"No, I-I came to…" Lucius had been prepared for a broken shell of a man. He was not prepared for this rosy, bright eyed fellow who looked like he received three hearty meals a day and a brisk walk around the grounds in the sunshine.

"They're taking it all away," Icarus said, in response to the question that had not been asked. "My feelings for Ilia. All the memories and the joy and the happiness. Day by day I feel it drain away from me like poison from a wound. It is glorious, my friend. Had I known, I would have gotten caught killing Muggles _years_ ago."

"...Right," said Lucius. "So…"

"I expect you've been sent to check on me, haven't you? Make sure I'm not spilling family secrets? I assure you, I have never been more trustworthy or true. And I imagine you want to know how much Iphany knows about her duties to our Lord. I fear she is not as far along in that regard as she should be. It so pained me to be near her, understand. I could only tolerate a bit at a time, here and there. I planned on finishing up by summer but…" He gave a sheepish grin and gestured at the damp walls of the prison with a shrug.

"What -" Lucius cleared his throat and shook off the chill creeping over his shoulders. The Dementor had moved a bit closer to the cell door. "What knowledge does she lack?"

"Are you sure you're up for this, Lucius?" Icarus frowned, and Lucius saw something other than abject radiance flicker in his eyes. "I see you're wearing the necklace, which was clever of her to get to you. I had those hidden away fairly well, I thought. But it's not like _that,"_ \- here he gestured at the silver dragon Patronus circling their heads - "not foolproof by any means, just a trinket her mother brought that the Sirens used to give the ones they loved to keep them from going mad when they returned to the sea. It doesn't keep you from -"

"I will manage," Lucius said. "I have Narcissa to help. I have been away most of the time, but I am not concerned. She is only a child, after all."

"If I thought you really believed that I'd say best of luck and send you on your way," Icarus replied. "But we both know you don't. I don't fault you, understand. I just can't have this going wrong. I'll be more than happy to get out of this place once they've taken all my memories, and Iphany is our best shot of getting rid of the boy right now."

"Perhaps not the best," said Lucius. "Certainly the most viable."

"Then we agree," Icarus replied. "Now, quickly, because I doubt my friend over there will suffer your presence much longer. Iphany knows who our Master is, obviously. She knows she has been chosen to perform a great task for him, and that task involves getting young Potter to fall in love with her and trust her enough to follow wherever she leads him. She has been practicing - I don't know what _they_ call it, I call it her music - because right now when she turns in on full force it's unsubtle, to say the least. Anyone watching would be hard pressed to believe there wasn't something nasty afoot."

"Oh I've seen it," Lucius said. "She made Draco eat a fish head."

Icarus shook his head and sighed. "Sorry about that, she's got very little experience with anyone other than me and a small handful of tutors."

"It was actually rather amusing," Lucius replied, chuckling at the memory. The Dementor at the door cocked its head, and Lucius felt his mirth extinguished like a spent candle.

"Still, she'll need to learn better manners. She'll need to practice, I'm afraid, on someone who is aware of what she is and is actively trying to resist. I am certain, things being the way they are, that Dumbledore will do his best to try and discern the slant of her loyalty early on, and will likely have an eye on her and will certainly be looking for any untoward attention towards Potter."

"This won't help her credibility much either," Lucius said as he glanced around the filthy cell.

"I thought that, too, but I think you can get her to use it to her advantage. She should be happy I'm here because I'm such a monster, and she should not shut up about how horrible you are from the moment she steps into the castle. Oh, all _right,_ William, I'm finished," Icarus said, waving a hand at the Dementor that was pushing further and further into the cell. Lucius shook his head.

"I've given them all names," Icarus confessed. He glanced up at the Dementor and gave an affectionate sigh. "They don't seem to care much for them."

. . . . .

"What reason do we have to stay here?"

Otilde looked up, her eyes wide with surprise. Around her stood the crumbling offal of the Novara Estate, leveled by the wave they had created. She put out a hand and stroked a tattered scrap of velvet caught on the teeth of a broken window. She and her sisters were able to manifest something like clothing when they left the sea, but this human-made stuff had no equal.

"Think about it. The house is gone. The girl is gone. Renali…"

"Do not," Otilde rasped. "Do not say her name." Alba bowed her shining head and let out a sigh.

"There is no need for us to stay by the island any longer. We could leave. We could go _anywhere._ "

"She would not want that," said Otilde. "It is everything we fought against, being driven away from our own home. If we leave, they win. Simple as that."

"We're leaving of our own choice," said Alba. She picked her way over the shattered wooden femurs of armchairs, flayed carpets stained with kelp, jagged piles of granite and marble. She put an arm around Otilde and leaned a head on her shoulder. "No one is driving us away. And you said yourself that moment Re-...the moment we lost her, the future turned gray and unreadable. If we can find Iphany ourselves, what's to say we cannot make it clear again? We could help her. We-"

"Alba," Otilde said, her face stitched into a scowl, "You're being ridiculous. For all I know, that power was tied to the three of us, and may never return. Besides, humans are treacherous, moreso now than they ever were. We have too much to lose."

Alba pulled back and looked into her sister's eyes.

"We have _nothing_ left to lose but our last sister, who has never known the freedom of being her true self. She's never touched the real ocean, only the cove. Doesn't she deserve that, even if it means the end of us? Ilia's enchantment unravels by the day, we know that much from Renali. She is beginning to wake up, to feel again. If it breaks all at once she will be in danger, and even if it does continue to slowly weaken she will still need help navigating herself. We have had eternity to enjoy this world. She is owed at least a glimpse of happiness, even if it is trapped in the confines of mortality."

"Renali barely lasted a week," Otilde said. She pulled away from Alba's grasp, unable to believe she was being so reckless and stupid. Of them she was certainly the most hopeful and trusting, but this was beyond hope; it was suicide. "And once we shift, we may not be able to turn back from gulls. That was a risk Renali was willing to take. I am not."

Alba smiled.

"Who said anything about shifting?"

. . . . .

 _Hello,_ Iphany thought as she smiled up at the moon. _I've missed you, old fellow._

She held out her bare arms and turned her palms skyward. The full moon had a weight to it, a density, a tangible quality held back by an invisible barrier every other night of the month. It slid over her shoulders, pressed cool and heavy in her hands, dripped through her fingers. She hummed and turned in a circle in the waist-deep water, allowing the celestial light to burrow down inside her skin, warming her from the inside until it crested the dam of her spirit and erupted in an ethereal duet. Her own voice—and the moon's. She both followed and listened, directing and absorbing as the air rippled with melody and sent miniature whitecaps to lap against the pebbled shore of the pond.

 _Thank you, thank you,_ she thought - or rather, sang - in a tongue she knew only in these moments of communion with the powers that made her. She forgot about every unpleasant feeling she'd had this week, forgot about the dead gull, forgot about Narcissa, forgot about the emptiness of her days. For so long as she sang down the moon, she was moonlight herself and nothing more. She missed the sea, of course. But the moon was everywhere.

She drifted back into her body, but not without a fight. As hard as she tried to remain in that un-alive, in-between place amidst the physical world and the Other, something pried her away, like a father dislodging a child's fingers from his shirt tail. She felt very much like a child as she looked around to regard the world, looking plain and ordinary again, and wanted to shake her fist at the solemn white orb hanging in the sky.

Instead, she trudged out of the water, relishing the lingering body-buzz left by the power she'd called down. Idly she wondered what would be done about these nights when she was at Hogwarts. From every story and account she'd read, it was always a full moon when the sailors of old came upon Sirens, which would explain why those tales ended in tragedy for the men.

 _And the Sirens,_ Iphany thought. She knew the parts most stories skipped over. Man sees Siren. Man overpowers Siren. Man takes Siren. Siren has her revenge.

 _But we're the evil ones,_ she thought. _I bet every single one of them, if alive today, would say he just couldn't help it, it wasn't his fault. Bunch of nonsense. Pack of liars, every one of them._

Unpleasant thoughts were no match for the moon-glow. With her next breath she inhaled euphoria and exhaled calm. She gathered her clothes and slipped them on, forgetting her shoes in a haze of contentment. Her footprints seared the ground with brief flares of blue-white luminescence. She paused to run her fingers over a vine of wisteria creeping over the hedges and smiled at the trails of light she left behind.

 _If I could bottle this and sell it, I'd be the richest woman in the world,_ she thought. The flowers resumed their ordinary colors as she turned and made her way back inside.

Having seen nothing of Narcissa that day, Iphany decided it was safe enough to visit the library. She found it waiting for her, doors open to an unassuming fire, just bright enough to provide reading light. Her tea tray hovered next to the reading chair, and plumes of steam drifted up out of the spout of the teapot.

On full moon nights, she did not sleep at all. At home this usually meant spending all night outside under the stars with the symphony of the sea playing in the background. Here, she would read. Despite the moon loving her as much as it always had, she ached for the sound of wilder waters, and the more time she spent in a pond that was not her cove, the wider the silent gulf yawned.

So she settled into the chair and drew a throw blanket over her lap, more for the exquisite silkiness of it than the warmth it provided. It had a lovely library-smell: ink and paper, smoke and tea, a hint of some strong spirit like whiskey, the faint, distant redolence of a man's cologne. She wrapped the blanket around herself and breathed, wondering why the smell was nearly as intoxicating as the lingering rapture of her swim.

The teapot was empty and the fire somewhat lower by the time the first twinge of exhaustion settled in her mind and began to whisper.

She sat up, alarmed by the wrongness of the feeling, and by compulsion looked out the window as if to assure herself that the moon was indeed still full. A face-splitting yawn cracked her jaw.

Then Yanna appeared.

"Mistress Iphany Novara, should Yanna pour your another cup of tea?"

Iphany startled and squared off with the nervous little elf. Yanna was even uglier than usual, if such a thing were possible. Both eyes were ringed with purpling bruises, his hands were wrapped in dirty gauze, one of his toes was swollen to thrice its normal size.

"Did you fall down every flight of stairs on the way here?" Iphany asked, more curious than concerned. She knew elves were prone to self punishment, but this seemed a bit extreme.

"No, Mistress. Yanna was a bad elf and had to punish himself. Yanna should never, _ever_ question a Witch's orders, no he should not. Does Iphany Novara want more tea?"

"I've finished the pot, I don't need any more," Iphany replied. "What did you question that would make you do _that_ to yourself?"

Yanna's face twisted up in a grimace and he shook his head. A calvary of expressions waged war across his swollen features; first agony, then determination, followed by sadness and shame. She had never seen a house elf look so conflicted in her life.

"Nothing that Iphany Novara should concern herself with," he finally replied.

"Oh, fine. Where's Blat?"

Yanna bit his lip so hard that Iphany swore she saw tears welling in his eyes. The elf's bizarre behavior was starting to dull the edge of her moon-induced euphoria and making her even _more_ tired. She yawned again.

"Blat hurt herself in the kitchens this evening, so I volunteered to check on you, Mistress," Yanna said. He backed up a few paces, whimpering. "Do you need anything else from Yanna?"

"No, go on, you're spoiling my vibes," she said with a wave of her hand. "Go put a steak on your eyes or something, it hurts me just looking at it."

"Yes, Mistress Iphany Novara, Yanna will go put a steak on his face."

The elf burst into sobs and fled the room.

"And good riddance," Iphany mumbled. What a way to ruin an evening. She settled back into her chair, ready to pick up where she'd left off in the historical fiction series about a Witch working for the Royal Army during one of the Muggle world wars.

But then the crying began.

She was out of her chair in an instant, both book and blanket forgotten in a heap on the floor. She dashed for the library doors, tiredness momentarily stayed by the excitement of hearing the voice again.

The ballroom held no magic for her this time, and her pulse beat heavy and hard as she reached the door. Her head throbbed in time, a sharp red ache renewed by each percussive slam of her heart against her ribs. She opened the door, sure that she would see the false closet again.

She let out a triumphant whoop as the staircase appeared, vaguely lit by the stars in the ballroom. The crying was so loud now that she nearly plugged her ears. A dozen steps into growing darkness. She reached for the heavy iron handle and pulled.

The door groaned an explicit complaint as she forced it open and stepped inside. The crying stopped. She stood face to face with the source, unable to contain a horrified gasp.

The ghost floated in the corner of the room, an insubstantial wisp of white bearing the visible outline of a female form. As Iphany got closer, she could see more details of the apparition: it was so thin as to be skeletal, its fingers were bent into twisted, unnatural claw-like shapes, multiple sores and contusions covered the bare, twiggy legs.

"That was you," she whispered. "You were the one crying."

The spirit nodded and buried her face in her hands.

"Are you trapped?" Iphany asked. The ghost nodded again.

"Can you...I mean, can you tell me how you...uhm...wound up in here?"

This time the ghost shook her head, then opened her mouth wide. Iphany recoiled with a shudder. The woman's teeth and tongue were gone.

"Merlin wept," she murmured. "How long have you been down here?"

Another shake of the head, followed by a low, keening wail that made every inch of Iphany's skin crawl. She started to back away, thinking of ways to apologize for offending the spirit while also getting out of there. Immediately.

But the ghost was not looking at her; she was looking over Iphany's shoulder, vacant eyes round with terror as a skinny spectral finger pointed at the door. Iphany grimaced and turned around just in time to see the door slam shut. The iron bolt gave a metallic hiss as it slid into place.

"Uh oh," said Iphany, right before she collapsed onto the stone.

. . . . .

Narcissa heard the muffled thud of a body hitting the floor and knew her work was nearly done.

The relief, tentative as it was, made her feel light and giddy. Soon they would be rid of her. Soon everything would be as it was before. Soon she would have her husband home, not out in the world trying to avoid this half-human creature, leaving Narcissa to deal with everything that came along with it.

She patted the key in her pocket and smiled. It was time to send an owl.

. . . . .

Iphany lay on the floor and wished for death.

If there was a torture worse than being conscious and unable to move so much as an eyebrow, she did not wish to know it. Her eyes streamed hot tears as she tried to burn the walls down with her gaze, unable to even blink. In some dank corner a steady drip of water splashed onto the granite. And for an extra layer of fun, she had to pee.

"Blat," she whispered. An icy wind fluttered through her body as the ghost passed over her prostrate form. The spectre looked down at her and shook her head. Silver tears slid down the concave cheeks.

"Could we _not?_ " Iphany wheezed. Even breathing was difficult; her lungs were bound with steel wire, her throat constricted around each breath. "You have to go find my elf. I doubt she knows I'm here."

The ghost shook her head and backed away, hands aloft to ward away Iphany's command.

"Oh, what then, I'm supposed to just lay here and _die?_ Get stuck down here with you? Is that what you want?"

The ghost gave a cunning, hideous smile. Iphany groaned.

"Lovely. You really sold it too, with that pointing and the owl-eyed charade. Well, I've got news for you, I don't even know if I _can_ die. And even if I did I am not sure what kind of company I'd be. I admire your tactics, though, luring people in with that pitiful crying. You'd get along well with my...kind," Iphany finished. She drew another laborious breath. The ghost let out a despondent, monosyllabic wail and fled to the corner of the room.

From her half-turned slump on the floor, Iphany could only make out the hard coffin arch of the door and the outer corner of a barred window far too high and narrow to be useful. No windows, no moonlight. No hope.

 _I will not die in a cage._

Iphany cursed herself for leaving her wand behind, even though it wouldn't have made a difference given her near-total paralysis. She had no idea what kind of potion would do that to anyone, let alone a Siren. Whatever it was, she was almost certain it had something to do with the strange man she had seen around the manor.

 _Oh Merlin, she's got me brewed up so she can sell me to that ginger pervert,_ Iphany thought. The fact that Narcissa had no need for the money did not occur to her.

 _I will_ ** _not_** _die in a cage._

"Blat," she said again. The elf was usually so good about coming when called, sometimes even before Iphany had the chance to say her name. She had not, to Iphany's recollection, ever missed a summoning.

She nearly rolled her eyes out of their sockets when she made the connection between Blat's absence and Yanna's nervousness in the library. He'd have tied her up somewhere, knocked her out, busied her somewhere out on the grounds, where she would not be able to sense her Mistress' call. Iphany spared a moment of respect for Narcissa; she'd really thought of everything.

She lay there on the hard stone floor, feeling the cold grit beneath her cheek, allowing a moment or two of self pity. Really, she had not asked for any of this. She had been happy - well, happy was not quite the word - she had been settled, disciplined, at her father's house. The idea of loneliness was as remote as the stars, though part of her reasoned that she _should_ have felt lonely, or at least bored. As Iphany watched the translucent woman pacing back and forth across the narrow width of the cell, a distant strain of music filtered up through the bland, gray expanse of her memories.

 _Sorrow,_ it sang. _Sorrow, alone, sorrow, suffering, alone. Help me. Help me. Alone._

"Can you leave this cell?"

The ghost stopped and turned to face Iphany. There was a kind of terrible grace in her slow, fluid movements, the smears of light her incorporeal limbs left behind. She gave a careful, wary nod, then held up her hand with thumb and forefinger separated by a centimeter or two.

"You can leave, but only for a little while?"

The ghost nodded, glided across the room and pointed at the door, gestured at the walls around them, and pantomimed pulling a rope as she drifted back to the center of the cell. Iphany frowned, then winced at the scrape of her cheek against the ground.

 _I moved,_ she thought, surprised. She furrowed her brow again, feeling the subtle grind of skin on stone. She had not been able to do that a few minutes ago. Her heart sputtered and pounded above the listless rhythm imbued by the poison.

 _It's wearing off._

The ghost was still watching her, and though she could not see much of the woman's face from where she lay, the mournful song trickling beneath her thoughts pitched up a step or two.

 _Sorrow. Alone. Hope?_

"What if I could-" Iphany paused, noting that she could now feel an icy tingle in her fingertips, "What if I could help you? Move on, or...out, or whatever it is you need to do."

The woman's face fell and she held up her hands, as if to say: _There is no way._

"I know you can't talk, but I can find out what happened to you. I can find out why you're trapped here. I mean, don't you usually have unfinished business and all that? I'll help you finish it. But you have to help me first."

A troubled look darkened the woman's features, triggered by a memory Iphany did not wish to contemplate. She held her breath as the spectre regarded her in silence.

Then she nodded.


	18. Madrigal

Huge thanks to my horcrux zara_skye for her help with this chapter.

. . . . .

Nobody saw the owl, black against the midnight sky, a feathered ebony flash sliding between shafts of starlight. Nobody heard him glide down the stone face of the manor house, nobody noticed him land on the precarious edge of the dungeon window. Nobody detected the shimmering white form that followed him, seeming to melt into the wall beneath the window to arrive unscathed on the other side.

Nobody but Iphany.

"Diablo," she said. The owl clicked his yellow beak in greeting, his black banded wings outstretched to maintain his perch on the ledge. Iphany leaned against the wall, holding a torn scrap of fabric in her hand. Her fingers were rent and red with blood. She could not yet stand, but she had managed to scoot herself over to the space beneath the window. With an arm outstretched, she was still a foot shy of reaching the ledge.

"I need you to take this to...someone. Anyone who will help me. I'm stuck, they've got me locked in here. Can you do that?"

Diablo settled his wings and tapped the bars with his beak.

"I know, I know. You'll have to reach. Please, Diablo. I know you were my father's but I need you." Iphany reached up towards the window, her arm trembling and weak from the poison. She couldn't hold it much longer. _Please, you silly owl,_ she thought, gritting her teeth at the strain.

The owl gave a soft _hhroooo_ and hooked a bar with his beak. Then he extended one fluffy feathered leg through the spaces _,_ talons reaching like curved black daggers. Iphany winced and bit her lip, willing her arm to rise just another centimeter.

 _I will not die in a cage._

She let out a whoop of triumph when she felt him catch and drag the cloth from her fingers. Diablo pulled his leg back and clutched the wadded up piece of fabric in his taloned foot.

"Hhhhrooo?" He trilled. Iphany shook her head.

"I don't know. Not the Ministry, they'll take me away. Anyone else. Anyone who can stop Narcissa before she does whatever it is she's planning."

Diablo cocked his head, gave a long, slow blink, and took wing. Iphany collapsed in a heap beneath the window, unaware that the vedonia in the poison was entering its second round of potency, that her brief reprieve from its effects would now come to a swift and painful end. This time, when her limbs seized up and the paralysis returned, she found herself awash in the kind of blood-curdling agony that she had only experienced once, at eleven, on the shores of her cove at the hand of her father.

But even as her mind threatened to veer away from consciousness, even as she lost control of her bladder, even as her throat refused to voice the screams in her chest, she would not submit to despair and shame, instead reminding herself through each wave of pain:

 _I will not die in a cage._

 _I will not die in a cage._

 _I will not die in a cage._

. . . . . .

Lucius Apparated into the library and knew at once that something was wrong.

The doors were wide open and the fire was spent. A silk and fur blanket lay tangled on the floor with a discarded book wrapped up in its folds. On the tray next to his chair there was a toppled teacup, an empty pot, and a plate scattered with biscuit crumbs. He bent down and examined the splotches of spilt tea on the arms of his chair, some new, some dried. He glared at the perfectly good chair on the other side of the rug and wondered why she'd insisted on soiling _his._

That thought came and went at a clip, supplanted by his perception of some untold disturbance in her evening. He followed the light into the hallway, through the open doors, looking for any other signs of strangeness. There were no portraits on these walls, otherwise he'd have asked them what they might have seen, and there were no open windows or smashed lamps to indicate his premonitions had a basis in reality. The sensation of danger started to fade, and the comfortable pleasure of being home washed over him. He was merely tired, spooked by his visit to Azkaban, ready to sleep in his own bed and read in his own chair.

 _Ought to make her clean it,_ he thought sourly as he peeled off his cloak and hung it over one arm. He imagined that might not go over well, but he wasn't feeling very magnanimous that evening.

 _Clean it on her knees,_ came the next thought. He stopped in his tracks, looking for someone to punish over the inappropriate thought. Perhaps a bit too ironically, his gaze landed on a baroque-carved mirror holding curt between two suits of armor.

But the self-admonishment never came, because the sound of footsteps on the far staircase drew him out of his musings. It was Narcissa; he knew her walk as well as anything. She froze in place when she saw him, and to her undoing swept her arm behind her back.

"Lucius," she said, her voice too high and hard. "I did not know you were coming home."

"Let's see it," he said, striding towards her.

"What do you mean?" Her eyes were wide and innocent, a careful smile stretched across her lips. She took a step or two backwards towards the stairs.

"Behind your back. What is that?"

"It's nothing, dear, just a letter to Draco," she said as she slipped the parchment into her robe pocket. "Just wanted to wish him well for his end of year. Slytherin's ahead in house points, did you know?"

"If you think I can't tell when you're lying to me…" Lucius approached his wife and took hold of her forearm before she could step out of reach. "Show me _now,_ Narcissa."

Her face fell, and to his utter surprise, her eyes glossed with tears. Her shoulders dropped with released tension, but still did not hand him whatever it was she was hiding.

"I'm doing this for us," she whispered. "Someone has to protect this family."

"Accio parchment," Lucius said. Narcissa tried to snatch the paper away as it worked out of her pocket and sailed towards him, but was not fast enough. He swept away from her and unrolled the letter.

 _Sir,_

 _The potion was successful. You will find what you need in the dungeon. The third stone to the right of the window is a Portkey._

 _Best of luck,_

 _N._

"What is this?" Lucius lowered the letter and looked up at Narcissa. "What have you done?"

"It's perfect, Lucius. You'll spoil everything, just let me send the letter. She'll be gone. You can kill him - in retaliation, of course. Nobody will know it was us. Nobody will know."

"Is Iphany in the dungeon? Is she _dead?_ "

"No!" Narcissa shouted. Lucius saw the outline of her hand as she traced the wand in her pocket.

 _She'll be gone. Nobody will know._

He hesitated. Could it be so easy?

"Tell me the truth, and tell me now," he said, his voice low and even, his eyes on her hidden hand.

"Manglis MacAullen," she whispered. "He's from that island, same as her. Whole family turned Squib after one of his ancestors started killing Sirens. He wants her, wants her blood - thinks it will restore what he lost. He wants to sell her hair, and…" She shuddered, unable to continue. "But it has to be tonight, he said. He's going to get rid of her for us, then we will get rid of _him._ Say he kidnapped her, lured her out - you found them, but it was too late to save her. It won't be your fault, or mine, or Draco's."

Lucius started to laugh; even to his own ears it was a cold, brittle sound. He took his wand and sent the letter floating between them.

"Do you think Voldemort will believe that?" He met Narcissa's eyes, and with a small flick of his wrist the letter burst into flames. She made a noise of protest, reaching in vain for the embers and ashes drifting down to the floor.

"He may pretend to. In fact, I am certain he would. He would pretend to believe us, we would congratulate ourselves on our cleverness, and while we smiled at each other he would slip into our minds and learn the truth. He can do that, you know. I can resist, when the need is strong enough. You would not last a moment. He would wait until we were comfortable and secure in our success, and then he would deliver his retribution."

Lucius turned away as his wife sobbed into her hands. He wanted to comfort her, he wanted to strangle her, he wanted to write the letter himself and be done with all of it.

But he did none of these, because his Dark Mark flared to life, and a voice hissed inside his head, three words, words that Narcissa clearly heard as well, for the terror on her face nearly took his breath away:

" _Bring your wife."_

. . . . .

From the road the meeting-place resembled the burned out husk of a tower, with only a single crooked chimney still standing. An overgrown thicket of weeds surrounded the place, with no indication that any human ever braved the knee-high grasses or piles of rocks strewn at intervals across the lawn.

Lucius and Narcissa appeared at the edge of the field, and in wordless unison stepped from the road to the grass. Lucius counted thirty steps before he felt the raw shiver of magic and saw the truth rise from the ground to block out the stars. The tower was old, but was clearly not abandoned or ruined. A few of the bottom windows were warm with the glow of a fire, and the smell of smoke drifted towards them on an unchecked summer breeze.

Just as they reached the door, he felt Narcissa's fingers brush the back of his hand. He looked down, then up at her.

"I'm sorry," she said. He set his jaw and nodded.

"I know."

They stepped inside.

. . . . . .

"Such a shame," said the Dark Lord. Narcissa knelt before him, hands bound at her back by a hex that made her skin burn. Voldemort rounded on her and drew out what appeared to be a scrap of bloody fabric.

"To think that this _girl_ is more loyal to me than the two of you…" He clucked his snake-like tongue. "She's written it in blood, Narcissa. Any idea how that might have happened?"

Narcissa shook her head. She knew he wasn't expecting a reply, seeing as he'd lashed her mouth shut with magical thread. Voldemort let out a theatrical sigh and turned to Lucius.

"I doubt she acted alone," he said. "What part did you play in this, Lucius? Are you a turncoat already?"

"Look and see, my Lord," Lucius replied. He folded his hands behind his back, willing himself to hold strong as Voldemort sauntered over, wand balanced between his first and middle finger. A spike of pain struck his temple as the invasion began, and he steeled himself against the nauseating loss of control over his mind.

The Dark Lord found was he was looking for quickly, and stepped away from Lucius with a rare, if disconcerting smile.

"So you _did_ act alone," Voldemort said, turning back to Narcissa. "I would be impressed with your scheming if I weren't so terribly disappointed."

Narcissa tried to speak, her lips pulling painfully against the threads. Voldemort drew up behind her and placed a hand on the top of her head.

"Shh, my lady," he intoned. "All will be well. I won't do anything to you that you weren't planning on doing to her."

Lucius flinched, and without thinking, took several steps forward.

"She did a terrible thing, my lord. But perhaps-"

"Do you want to watch?"

Narcissa could not help herself. She screamed into her sealed lips, struggled against the indelible bonds that held her. Lucius did not need to hear the words themselves to know what they meant.

 _Please. Please. Please._

He gulped a shaking breath and shook his head.

"Then go," the Dark Lord said. "I've not finished with you, though. Had you been at home where you belong, this would not have happened. I'll deal with you later."

Lucius took another step forward.

"She is my wife…" He said, his voice thick, hands outstretched, face contorted into a grimace. Voldemort snapped his wand and Narcissa pitched forward. Her forehead struck the ledge between a stone dais and the floor.

"Get another one," said Voldemort.

. . . . .

She was going to die in a cage, but at least she could see the sky.

The pain had receded into something even more alarming - total numbness. From what she could tell, it started in her fingers and toes, spread along the tangled network of veins, sealing off each muscle, each patch of skin. She feared what would happen when it reached her lungs or heart. There was a flat, sour taste on her tongue that might have been the coppery remnant of her own blood. She gagged at the memory.

"Looks like you'll get your wish after all," she mumbled to the figure in the corner. The ghost wrung her hands and shook her head.

"I know you tried," Iphany said. "Thanks for that."

 _Poor, poor, poor girl,_ sang the ghost's unfiltered thoughts. Iphany heartily agreed.

The numbness reached her shoulders, crept up the column of her spine. She could feel her lungs struggling to expand, refusing to release the breath they did manage to draw. Her heart beat a terrified rhythm; the only thing in her body still fighting to stay alive. She did not know that she was not meant to have suffered the effects of the poison this long, that had things gone according to Narcissa's plan, Manglis would have had her flayed and dissected before it got this far.

She did know that she was dying, and was surprised to find a sort of peace in the idea. Death would be something, wouldn't it?

 _I'm not afraid,_ she told herself, told the tears running down her face, the sudden overwhelming sorrow for a life unlived. The memory of Narcissa's offer to help her, before it all went sour, sprung up unbidden in her mind. She recalled the moment when she felt a dark part of herself chip away and crumble, and something like light start to filter in. And now, in these moments before death, she experienced the same thing, though this time it was grief, not joy, that rushed over her like the breaking tide.

Another piece of her mother's spell unspooled from its withering tapestry.

She did not notice the light from the hall, could not see the hesitant brown feet approaching, could not feel the frantic, gnarled hands patting her leg.

But she heard Blat's sobs, and knew she was saved.

"Oh Mistress Iphany Novara," Blat said, her small fingers brushing over the bloodstains and the smears of moss and filth. She could not heal the wounds to Iphany's fingers, nor could she stay the potion's course, but she did her best to clean her Mistress up with her primitive Elf magic.

"Blat," Iphany said. "How did you find me?"

"Blat hears Mistress calling for her, but Yanna has Blat in Mistress' room and will not let her out. Then suddenly Yanna is gone, and the door is open, and I come to you at _once,"_ the elf wailed. "Blat is so sorry! Blat should have protected her Mistress, not left her in a stinking cell to die!"

"Blat," Iphany wheezed, "Blat, I can't breathe. You need to...find the antidote, or a bezoar, anything."

"Yes, Mistress! Where can Blat find a bezidote?"

"Anti...oh Merlin, I'm going to die," Iphany sighed. "Does anyone live nearby? Do the Malfoys have, I don't know, neighbors or…"

"Someone is coming!" Blat whispered. Iphany listened, and sure enough she heard the sound of someone approaching, and at a rapid clip. Blat drew herself up to her full height and stood over Iphany. "You will not hurt her! Go away!"

"Move, unless you want her to die," said Lucius. "Idiot elf."

"Narcissa," Iphany panted. "It was Narcissa. Did you get my letter?"

"Open your mouth," said Lucius. Iphany obeyed, trying to see what it was he was about to feed her. It _looked_ like a bezoar, but how could she be sure? What if this was some elaborate trick to finish her off? Just as the noxious-smelling thing approached her mouth, she snapped her lips shut.

"No you don't," Lucius hissed. "Not today."

He snaked one arm beneath her shoulders and dragged her up to sit. Her useless head lolled back on her shoulders, but still her mouth remained closed. Lucius wrenched her back into his chest and took a firm hold on her chin.

Wild panic gripped Iphany, and being unable to fight back was the worst injustice of all. If there was anything her father had taught her, it was that she should never, ever, _ever_ allow herself to be touched by a man, and certainly not by his bare hands, and certainly not by one who may or may not have designs on ending her life.

"Get your hands off me," she said through gritted teeth. "I'll take it, just don't touch me."

Lucius, not wanting to wait for her to change her mind, shoved the bezoar into her mouth and released her. She thudded against the ground, landing mostly on her shoulder, nearly losing the bezoar to the impact. But she caught it between her teeth, held her struggling breath, and swallowed.

It took less than a minute for the feeling to return to her fingers and toes. In two she could move her hands again, and in three she was struggling to sit up and taking deep, unhindered breaths. She could feel the bezoar working to siphon the poison out of her body; it pulsed like a grounded star in her belly, a warm unpleasant feeling. She lifted a hand to her abdomen, thinking she could feel it there, buried under layers of skin and viscera.

But along with the poison, the bezoar had snared a toxin of a different sort. It did not differentiate between the spell and the potion; both registered as foreign elements requiring a purge. Had Iphany known this, she might not have fallen to her knees, one balled fist beating at her chest, where a whetted needle of pain poked and prodded at her heart.

"You tricked me," she rasped, in a voice that she did not recognize. The bezoar caught a thread of spell and _tugged._ She bit down on a scream, scrabbling frantically at her chest, shoving a hand into her belly, trying to quiet the nauseating throb of the stone in her stomach. The spell was fighting back, _hard._

 _Her father's face, a barbed and twisted thing, hovering over her as he cast that hateful curse again and again and the coals of pain that traced her limbs like a lover, what was a lover_

She threw up. The bezoar, along with a few bits of bread and lots of water, splashed the wall and the floor in a disgusting puddle. Blat, who had until that moment been cowering in a corner, skittered up to clean the mess.

When Iphany drew herself up again, Lucius fell back until his shoulders met the wall with a thump.

The naked, raw agony in her face ripped the breath from his lungs. He had watched people tortured, done quite a bit of it himself, rather enjoyed it, from time to time. He knew every shade and shadow of pain on a person, from the first glimmerings of discomfort held behind a mask of bravery, to the sweet spot of exhaustion and surrender, and the empty madness of a mind thrust through the fire too many times to retain its hold on sanity.

This, however, was quite different. Behind the torment, the very human and recognizable emotions of betrayal and sorrow, simmered something else. Something ancient, something wild and untameable, a rage ignited, a power unfurling before him in swells of silver-blue, the moon on a sea that remembers the storm and refuses to return to placidity and calm. The girl - not a girl, the Siren - took three steps towards him. Her latent power crackled and fizzled along the lines of her skin, and he knew that if she touched him, it would be his last memory before being consumed by a magic beyond even the oldest scribblings of archaic runes in the primordial dust of a cave floor.

It was _beautiful._

And in an instant, it was gone.

The fraying thread of enchantment, no longer threatened by the bezoar, limped back through her rumpled spirit and wove itself back where it belonged: looser, not so finely stitched, but intact. Iphany sat back on her heels, her face turned down in a frown that would have been comical if it weren't such a pallid imitation of the truth.

 _Why is he looking at me like that?_ She felt fine, now. Better than fine, good as new, really, aside from the uneven rhythm of her breath.

Lucius leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes, his is head sinking so far down that his forehead nearly touched his bended knees. He was breathing heavily himself, hand clenching and unclenching around his wand.

"I'm-" Iphany cleared her throat. "Hello."

Lucius lifted his head and stared at her for a few moments, eyes bleary and unfocused. He looked well and truly awful, now that she could take in all of him at once. His white oxford was rumpled and dusty, the bottoms of his trousers damp to the ankles, with bits of grass and hayseed clinging to the wet spots. Several long strands of white-gold hair hung loose around his face, having escaped from the velvet tie at the nape of his neck.

But his eyes were the worst, purpled beneath the sockets, red-rimmed, narrow, as though he'd been…

 _Crying?_

The bark of laughter erupted before she could slap a hand over her traitorous mouth. Lucius jolted at the sound, snapped his flint-cold gaze at her.

 _Ah,_ she thought, clamping her tongue between her teeth, _There he is._

"What's funny, Miss Novara?" He rose to his feet, and she was reminded how very much larger he was than her, how his voice was both the cracking winter skin of a frozen lake and the warmth of the sun that melted it. She looked down at her feet, her scuffed and swollen toes, and shook her head.

"Sorry," she said, not sounding it. "I think something in me is broken. I never laugh when I am supposed to, and always when I shouldn't."

She heard him take several long, measured breaths, and dared a glance to see him attempting to leash a shiver of something - not anger, no. Fury. Without thinking, she pressed herself against the wall, as if that might protect her from the brunt of it, should his attempts to control fail. But he gathered himself at the next inhale, and when he spoke again it was in an even, genteel tone.

"Can you walk?" He asked.

"Maybe," she replied. "Where's Lady Malfoy?"

"Dead by now, if she's lucky," said Lucius. That pinched and haunted look darted in and out of his eyes again. "Why did you write to _him?"_

Iphany was still processing the word _dead,_ so she did not answer. Had Lucius killed his own wife? Her fingers itched to grasp a wand that was not there.

"Tell me, girl. Why did you write to the Dark Lord? Could you not think of anyone else?"

"I didn't write the - what? I just told Diablo to get it to someone who could help me, I didn't say him. I wasn't - I wasn't thinking clearly, I could barely move." Anger bristled beneath her reply; was he actually blaming her? "And where were you while your wife was poisoning me and locking me in the dungeon to rot?"

"Staying the hell away from you," he snapped. She could not help but wince at the acid in his voice. He made his way over to her, then, incredibly, offered a hand to help her stand.

"I can manage," she said, hoping her tone was equally as caustic. She managed, but with very little dignity; it took three tries before she was able to remain on her feet without using the wall for support. She took a few careful steps, and when she did not fall flat on her face, she continued to the door.

"If she's really dead," said Iphany, "I _am_ sorry about that. I'm not sure exactly what she was planning, but I am pretty sure it wasn't tea and shopping."

Lucius stared at her so intently, with such open incredulity, that she felt compelled to check her forehead to make certain she hadn't grown a horn. What was he on about? Narcissa tried to kill her, and got caught. Whatever happened after that wasn't any more Iphany's fault than her reasons for being here in the first place.

"I'll be off, then," she said. "Um, good night." She peered around Lucius, looking for the ghost. Some time during the exchange she had vanished. Well enough, she'd keep her promise anyway.

. . . . . .

For a long time, Lucius stood alone in the cell, looking at an empty doorway.

He had cried, yes. For thirty seconds, upon Apparating into his wife's chamber from Lord Voldemort's lair. He'd meant to appear in his study, as was his usual way, but somehow the direction of the spell skewed through the bend-and-twist of space to deposit him at the foot of her bed. It was neatly made, silver and sapphire blankets tucked in beneath the cascade of decorative pillows, hangings parted, slippers laid out, night-robe draped in silk and velvet over the bedside chair.

The smell of her, roses and powder, hung so thick in the room that he coughed, and the cough turned into a sob, and the sob burst forth in ugly black waves for half a minute before he slammed the gates shut and became himself again.

Then he was off to the dungeon, to save the insufferable brat. Not even a hint of gratitude, an ounce of remorse. Just her near-primal scream of _don't touch me_ and an apology that held about as much weight as one given for an accidental bump on a crowded train car.

And a brief, terrifying glimpse of the creature slumbering. _For now._

Anyone else would be writhing beneath his curses. Anyone else would be sputtering on the taste of their own blood. Anyone else would be made to suffer the loss of his wife - _a Malfoy's wife -_ in new and delicious ways that would spring up one day in a dark magic tome, as such spells tended to do, author unknown, results _guaranteed._

But she was not his to curse, not his to destroy. For a moment the desire to remedy that inconvenient fact rose above reason, until he found himself halfway up the dungeon steps with his wand in his hand and her foul name on his lips.

 _Control,_ he told himself, told his wand, already alight with a sickly green sparks that danced and sputtered from its tip. To prove his point he shoved the disobedient thing back into its cane-sheath, subconsciously stroking the silver snake head, a forefinger tapping the emerald eye.

Narcissa was gone, or as good as. He _did_ hope she would not suffer much. There had been less softness between them in the most recent years, but he had grown fond of her, as both a witch and a woman. He did love her, in his way, in the way that he loved all lovely things he wished to possess. She had grown on him since the union arranged by parents in drawing rooms over tea and Sealing charms. Once a flighty, vapid thing; eventually a formidable, loyal woman.

 _Get another one,_ Lord Voldemort had said, as if wives grew on vines to be plucked off when ripe.

 _His did,_ came the internal reply, though Lucius suspected that the little Siren would not be a _wife_ in any traditional sense of the word. Voldemort liked to destroy beautiful things, even more so when they held a power he coveted and craved. He reveled in unmaking, the Dark Lord, and when something was as exquisitely made as Iphany Novara, it would be a fine revelry indeed.

That, at least, was a comfort. Perhaps if he played his part well, Lucius would be allowed to watch. Very well, and perhaps his Master would leave a bit of her, so he could play himself. A host of sweaty, aching, glorious possibilities dragged him out of his vengeful fantasy to a place he preferred not to go, not with the memory of Narcissa's muffled screams still so fresh in his mind. It was not proper, to so disrespect the soon-to-be-departed.

Not proper at all.

. . . . . .


	19. Tempests

::cracks knuckles:: Let's get our UST on, y'all.

. . . . .

Two women boarded the last Calmac ferry from Stornoway to Ullapool just as the attendant was getting ready to close up the passenger doors.

Though it was already several minutes past five, and the captain had thrice blown the all-aboard horn, they sauntered up the pier - glided, thought Balloch, his fingers tightening around the door handle, which had gone slick and sweaty against his palm.

"Look alive, lassies," he called, his other hand cupped around his mouth to carry his voice across the aquatic chatter of the evening tide. The women seemed to neither hear nor heed him, maintaining a synchronized gait, heads bowed and arms locked together.

"Running late already," he said, good-natured jesting spent. As the pair drew closer, Balloch felt a warmth slide up the back of his neck and an inexplicable sheen of perspiration gather at his temples. They did not look like mainland tourists, with cameras slung 'round sunburned necks and sacks of Harris tweed brought back for souvenir. One woman sported a tattered silk dress that fluttered in scraps around her knees; the other was wrapped in something that appeared to be an extremely fancy bathrobe in a similar state of disrepair. Neither wore shoes.

By the time they reached the boarding doors, Balloch was in a full sweat and his entire body trembled with chills. They didn't speak as they stepped from the pier to the ship, nor look or acknowledge his presence, just swept right by him, heads bowed; dark and light, deepest midnight black and silvery mother-of-pearl.

When he came back to himself he was in his customary seat at the berth of the passenger cabin, and Eleanor from the snack bar was waving her hand frantically in front of his face.

"Balloch!" she shouted, her freckled face screwed up in concern. "Balloch, oy! Are you sick?"

"No," he croaked around a shuddering breath. "What...how did I-"

"You've been sitting there like a loony for an hour," she said as she plopped down into the seat next to him. "Just staring at the wall and humming."

"I have?"

"Yeah, Alan sent me over to see if you were pissed or something. He said you were weaving all over when you closed up the doors. I'd have come sooner but I've been busy with drinks," she said. "You all right?"

"I think so," Balloch said. "Did you see them?"

Ellie quirked an auburn brow and canted her head.

"See who?"

. . . . . .

It was no small feat, convincing Blat that she wasn't going to drop dead.

First, the elf insisted on helping her take a bath. Iphany wanted to scrub away the dungeon smell, persistent and clinging despite Blat's attempts to banish it with magic. Iphany looked clean, but she felt filthy. Though her body was free of poison, a general ickiness clung to her skin, and she was still sore, inside somehow, from the effects of her ordeal. There was a bruise-like ache in her chest, a stitched-back-together sensation, a roughness grating the edges of her nerves.

Rather than expend any more energy arguing with the overwrought creature, Iphany allowed the elf to fuss under the condition that she was not allowed to cry anymore. It felt nice, anyway. Washing potions and scented oils, nimble fingers massaging her scalp and neck, warm water sluicing over her bruises and sore muscles. Blat was the only living thing whose touch did not set off a cascade of alarm bells and an odd, transitory whisper of shame.

She'd done her best to mend herself and had managed to coax the ragged cuts on her fingers to fuse. But the less visible pains were beyond her healing abilities, as they required an eye beyond the obvious.

Could have given me a once over, she thought, grimacing over the invasion of that grey-eyed prat into her nice, relaxing bath. A flare of anger burst warm in her belly, a shade too deep for the subject. The moments after the bezoar took hold remained thinly drawn in her memory; she could only recall a distant pain in - no, not distant, behind her ribs. There was a different kind of hurt, too, elsewhere, but the details frayed and unravelled upon closer inspection.

I just wish he wouldn't look at me like that, she thought, recalling the incredulous glare he gave her after she'd apologized for Narcissa being dead. As if she had anything to apologize for, honestly! She sat straight up, dislodging Blat from her braid-work.

"I'm not letting another person make me feel bad for being nothing more than my natural born self," she declared as she rose abruptly from the bathtub and snatched a towel from the rack by the window. Blat paused, clearly wondering whether or not she should expect to be at the receiving end of the proclamation.

"Finish up," Iphany said. "It's past dawn already, and I'm half-starved."

Blat obeyed, tugging the wavy mass of hair into the usual pair of dutch braids, the same hairstyle Iphany had worn since she was old enough to have hair. Today she wove the braids through with purple ribbons and a thin silver circlet that fit snug beneath the plaits and arched in a filigreed point between her brows.

"This seems a bit dramatic," Iphany said upon regarding herself in the mirror. "What's with this?" She gestured at the gleam of silver pressed against her forehead.

"Blat thought it might make Iphany Novara feel better to be extra lovely today," said the elf. "This was Mistress Ilia's, too. She wore it when she married Master Icarus."

"Well then it isn't really appropriate for a Tuesday, is it?"

Blat twisted her hands and her knotty lower lip vibrated, threatening to spill a wave of emotion that would damage them both. Iphany winced and held up a finger.

"I'll wear it, thanks," she said. She did not have the energy to listen to the elf whimper all morning. When she put on her robes, though, she noticed a new line of delicate violet embroidery following the seams and pleats of the frock, a splash of vibrant color on a drab gray field.

"Oh what's this now," she asked. "When did you do this?"

"Blat—forgive me, Mistress, but Blat just feels like she needs to change Iphany Novara's robes. Iphany Novara is brighter now, and so—"

"Brighter?" Iphany frowned, cutting Blat off. "What on earth does that mean?"

"Brighter, like...more…" Blat waved her hand through the air, trying to stir up the words she could not grasp. "More like she was. Before."

"Before what?" Without realizing it, Iphany's voice had dropped a step or two.

"Please don't listen to Blat, Mistress. If she doesn't like the purple threads Blat will change it back in a snap."

"It's fine," Iphany sighed. "I actually quite like it, all right? Now come on, if I don't eat soon I am going to start chewing on one of your ears."

Blat whinged and grabbed her ears and scampered out into the hallway before Iphany could make good on her threats.

. . . . .

Iphany had just tucked into her porridge when an out of breath Yanna appeared at the sun-room door.

"Get lost," she said around a mouthful. "I'm not speaking to you for a long time."

"Yanna deserves that, Mistress. Yanna did a horrible thing, he did. Yanna will never forgi-"

"Out with it," she said, once she'd swallowed and taken a long draught of pumpkin juice. "You lot are driving me crazy this morning."

"Yanna has been sent to bring Iphany Novara to the library at once," the elf said. He looked better than he had the day before, healed of his black eyes and bruises. Iphany snorted, an indelicate sound and shook her head.

"It's not even nine, and I just sat down to breakfast. And besides, why should I trust you?" She picked up her fork and stabbed at a buttered mushroom. Yanna squeaked and hopped from one foot to the other.

"But Mistress, it is Master Malfoy who wishes for Iphany Novara to come, and he will be very angry if Yanna returns without her."

"If he wants me so bad he can come get me himself," she said. She was done with people bossing her about, treating her like a naughty krup who needed to be brought to heel. It had gotten her precisely nowhere other than the gates of death thus far, and her newly awakened sense of self preservation balked at the idea of meeting that particular predicament again. Besides that, he'd tried to blame her for Narcissa's demise, when all she had done was try to save her own skin.

Yanna let out a groan and dropped his face in his hands.

"Master Malfoy will be very upset with Yanna," he whispered.

"Don't care," said Iphany. "Now go on." She fluttered her fingers at the elf and went back to her food.

Less than a minute later, she heard the crack of Apparition and felt a shadow fall over the back of her shoulders. She sank in to the thrill of defiance and refused to turn to acknowledge the intrusion.

"Miss Novara," came the low, liquid voice from the doorway. "The elf tells me you refused my summons."

"I did," she said, while making a deliberate show of seasoning her second cup of tea. "It's very rude to interrupt a person's meal."

It took every ounce of restraint not to turn around so she could enjoy his reaction. A small part of her questioned this novel desire to antagonize him, which seemed to spring up on its own, with no end result in mind. Usually her defiance had a purpose that revolved around getting what she wanted, whether it was practicing an over-advanced spell with Madame or sneaking around the Malfoy house after being told to mind her own business. Offending his Lord of the Manor sensibilities had no discernibly positive outcome other than amusement.

She heard his teeth clack together and fought back a grin.

"If you do not get out of that chair by the time I am finished speaking, I am going to be very displeased with you," he said. The implicit threat beneath the formal words made the hairs on her arm stand up. It thrilled her.

"Oh well, in that case," she said, and reached for another scone.

"Have it your way, then," he replied.

She turned around as his footsteps sounded, one hand shooting down to the belt of her robe to grab her wand. His was already unsheathed and aloft, while his other hand clapped down hard on her shoulder.

"Hey!" she shouted, and shoved back from the table to duck out of his heavy grasp. "What did I say about touching?"

But his ire was undermined by a haze of confusion, his patrician features ill-suited for such a common expression.

"How did you resist Apparition?"

"Oh that's rich," she said. "Isn't that illegal? You aren't supposed to Apparate someone against their will."

His face adopted a deliberate deadpan, and she remembered she was talking to Lucius Malfoy, twice a Death Eater and former Azkaban convict. She giggled into her sealed lips and managed not subdue the urge to laugh outright.

"I haven't any idea," she answered. "I was supposed to start learning this year."

His mouth thinned out beneath a brief flare of nostrils. Exhilaration bloomed along the tips of her fingers; she recalled the last time she discovered how it felt to draw such a reaction from someone, how her father's mounting agony made her feel grand and powerful, how he both shriveled and ignited as she shouted Siren, Siren, until it boomeranged back on her and all but cut her to ribbons.

Defying Lucius Malfoy was utterly intoxicating.

That's all it is, she told herself. I just like seeing him angry. I like feeling as though what I do makes a difference.

It had nothing to do with luxuriating in the predatory gleam in his silver eyes. Nothing at all.

"I'll ask you once more," he said, finally. "Will you please join me in the library?"

"No," she replied, with a cheerful smile. "Now -"

She settled her mind with a belly-deep breath, sought the ever present chords of melody and magic, lying muted and muffled under her voice, plucked a few invisible strings, and continued:

"Leave me alone."

His eyes glazed over and he dropped his hand, shuffling backwards towards the open door. Iphany smiled, remembering how he'd called her magic unsubtle, how he'd been unimpressed with her ability to make Draco eat a trout's head without moving a muscle.

Now who's susceptible, she gloated.

But he stopped at the door, his movements stiff and jerky, turning once towards her, then away, and back again, eyes clear but for a cool, terrifying undercurrent of calm.

"Abyssmal," he intoned. "And until you can do it without singing, you might as well be shouting your intentions from the rooftops."

Iphany stamped her foot, only slightly aware of how petulant she appeared.

"I wasn't singing," she said. "And you were practically out the door!"

"You were singing," he said. "Any fool with ears could hear it."

Iphany rocked back on her heels, trying to remember when she might have sang or hummed or even rubbed up against something other than her normal speaking voice. It all sounded the same in her memory.

"You fancy yourself powerful," Lucius said. "How quaint. I'm sure Lord Voldemort will think so, too, right after he's done torturing you for getting thrown out of Hogwarts the moment you set foot inside."

Iphany swallowed her retort, mostly because she did not have one. Lucius moved towards her again, hands folded behind his back, not even touching his wand, as though her presence was no more intimidating than the kitten who thinks itself a tiger.

"I could have you…" the weak-voiced reply dissolved in her mouth. She realized that beyond a simple command, she hadn't the first idea what she could have him do. He must have seen the understanding in her eyes, the hot flush of embarrassment painting hectic neon roses in her cheeks.

"Nothing more than a silly girl," he said, "You're an unlit candle, trapped beneath a glass."

He planted his hands on the table and leaned towards her; not touching, but far, far, far too close. Her next breath stuck in her throat.

"I'm going to teach you how to burn."

. . . . .

He left her to finish her meal, with instructions to be in the library in no more than fifteen minutes. She would have called it a victory but for her inability to swallow so much as another sip of tea.

Iphany glowered at the sun-struck wood-paneled walls, sneered at the bucolic scenes of rolling green hills and pastoral cottages worked into the tapestries, and snapped at Blat when she dared to remind her that it had been thirteen minutes and fifty three seconds, and the library was at least a three-minute walk from the breakfast room.

"Shut it, Blat," she said. "I know how to tell time."

She waited another moment or two for absolutely no reason, then pushed back from the table with a grumble and threw her napkin over the shredded remnants of scones and fork-pocked strawberries.

"Ruining my breakfast," she said, as she swept the crumbs off her robe. "Arrogant sod."

She ambled through the cavernous hallways, stopping now and then to admire a bust of one person or another, whom she did not recognize. Her feet scuffed the carpets in a graceless shuffle.

I ought to swing by the dungeon and say hello to my new friend, she mused. If she took a left down those stairs instead of continuing straight through the looming library doors…

She let out a shriek and brandished her wand as the doors banged open with a terrific crash. Fully expecting to find Lord Malfoy lording over her with a frigid glare, she was instead surprised to see no one at the threshold and an apparently empty room beyond.

"Unnecessary!" She shouted into the void before marching inside. The doors slammed behind her with equal theatrics, followed by a volley of metallic clunks that could only be several locks driving themselves home. The sound and its implications did something funny to her stomach, made her legs feel suddenly incapable of supporting the rest of her.

This is new, she thought, examining her trembling hands with detached fascination. She could not recall the last time her heart had beat so fast outside of exertion or pain. Even in her darkest moments in the dungeon the previous evening, her reactions had been dictated by the effects of the poison, not true fear. When she thought back on it now she remembered the experience, as she remembered most things, as viewed through a cloudy window on a day without sunlight. This feeling, this heat and this rush, this taste of metal in her mouth and the twist in her belly...it was here, it was happening, it was real.

Lucius studied her, much as he had the first night he caught her climbing the shelves. This time it was intentional; and this time, he was wearing the necklace. The thoughts of throwing her to the ground and making quick work of her robes and anything else underneath was mercifully dulled to a chimera in the back of his mind, allowing him to focus on the curious way she was reacting to the idea of being trapped.

He watched her examine her hands and press a palm to her chest to feel a racing heart.

He watched her test the strength of her knees to see if they would buckle.

He watched her look back at the door, count the locks, and draw a breath through parted lips when she realized how many there were.

She touched her heart again and smiled.

She likes it, he realized. She likes being afraid.

He spoke before he meant to, just to remove himself from the ideas the realization brought forward.

"When you can prove yourself capable of following simple instructions in a timely manner, we'll be able to conduct these lessons with the doors open," he said. She startled and turned to search the shadows, her brilliant eyes narrowing when they landed on him.

"All you do is creep up on people," she said, then, after a brief internal struggle that played out in vivid detail on her face, she succumbed to curiosity and asked, "What lessons?"

"We will start," he said, peeling away from the conversation to stride towards the center of the room, "With your attitude."

"I hardly think-"

He flicked his wand over a shoulder without sparing her a glance. She gave an indignant, muted shriek, and he silently thanked the Dark Lord for that little gem of a spell. He turned around and regarded her evenly, tilted his chin up to admire his work. Her eyes snapped mutinous green fire as her fingers investigated the thread binding her lips together.

That one's for you, dear wife, he thought. A fitting first lesson.

"That," he said, gesturing at the stitches, "Serves two purposes. One is to save me from hearing your impertinent nonsense. The other is to teach you to speak without running your mouth."

She rolled her eyes at the ceiling and crossed her arms with a smirk, quickly followed by a tiny wince of pain. She shuttered the reaction as swiftly as it came, composing her features into a defiant, haughty mask.

"There," he said. "Just now. That hurt, didn't it?"

She did not acknowledge the question, just continued to sneer, arms locked across each other.

"Answer me," he said, and with another upward tick of his wand, the stitching drew tighter. Again, the flinch came along with the subsequent refusal to acknowledge it, though now there was a bit of heaviness around her eyes, a ripple of strain forged in furrows on her brow.

"Iphany," he said. Tighter still, her lips blanched white with the pressure. She would not nod, would not even blink in concession. He sighed.

Most people began to break the moment pain became constant, especially if it was being inflicted by another person. He had seen a glimpse of her capacity for pain the previous night; the depth of power beneath it, the swiftness with which she stuffed it all back inside and again became little more than a smart-mouthed decorative object. She would never be able to access the full scope of her abilities if she did not learn to feel, to harness, to give the world enough of herself to make them believe her.

There's something broken in me, she'd said.

He decided to change tactics, as pushing her closer to the limits of her physical tolerance for pain wasn't doing the trick.

"What do you think I want from you right now?" He asked, an unseen gesture loosening the threads enough to alleviate the worst of the discomfort. She shrugged, pointed at the wand dangling from his hand, and then pressed her own into the white flesh of her throat. He chuckled and shook his head.

"If I wanted you dead," he said, "You'd be dead."

Her eyes widened for a moment and a light shiver passed over her shoulders. Then she paused, attention turning inward in contemplation.

After a beat or two, she looked back up at him, raised a shaking finger to her mouth, gave a pitiful whine in her throat and allowed a couple of tears to gather and trickle from beneath the fringe of her lashes.

"That's it," he whispered. "Good girl."

The radiant glow of the complement lit every contour of her face. This time it was Lucius who buried his reaction, giving a lukewarm shrug as he turned away from her and took up his seat by the fire.

"I don't know if it's from spending so much time alone or if there really is something addled inside you, or if it's because you're not entirely human - whatever it is you come off as...unsettling. Not dangerous, but untrustworthy. Not only that, but you broadcast every thought like a radio signal. I'm only a passable Legilimens and right now you're thinking, 'If that git insults me one more time-'

-I'm going to hex his arms off.

Iphany let out a throaty growl as his words came in unison with her own mental curse, false tears long forgotten. Lucius gave an indolent, infuriating smile.

"The most important thing you can learn, if you wish to master those around you, is how to give your subject exactly what they want. You had it right, with the tears. I wanted to see you show a bit of pain and vulnerability. As a result, you will get the reaction you desired."

He lifted his wand and drew it through the air in a graceful arc, and Iphany brought her hand to her mouth to find her stitches gone and the small wounds they'd left closing under her fingers.

"That wasn't very nice," she said.

"I'm not a very nice man," he replied. "Sit down."

To her credit, she only hesitated a moment or two before complying.

"You don't know anything about me," she said, sulking back into the chair. She drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, an odd, self-protective gesture that undermined the belligerent retort.

"I know enough. I know you're a Siren. I know your father spent very little time with you, that you've been on your own with a few nannies and a house elf to keep you company. I know that your father believed - believes you have the ability to hoodwink an entire school of professors and the very well-protected Boy Who Lived."

I know that you've caught the Dark Lord's eye, and that once you're finished the job, you will wish for death, he did not say out loud.

"But what I know or don't know about you does not matter. I am tasked with making sure you can perform the way your father wants you to, that you can give the Dark Lord what he wants. I intend to do that."

"By what, teaching me how to manipulate people?"

Despite the impertinence of the phrasing, the tone of her voice was more a question than a snippy reply. He nodded.

"Essentially," he replied. "But your unique attributes make you especially suited to utilize those teachings. From what I have read, once you make Potter love you, there isn't a spell on earth than can make him stop, and he will do anything - anything to make certain he does not lose you. And that is exactly what the Dark Lord wants."

She mumbled something under her breath, something that seemed to take her by surprise, as her eyebrows shot up to court the smooth plane of her forehead and her liberated mouth thinned out in a contemplative line.

"What's that?" he asked, intrigued by her confusion.

"What about what I want?" She said, in a small voice.

Lucius looked down to see his hands gripping the arms of his chair so hard that his knuckles were aching and white. He released his fingers, perplexed at the reaction.

"And what would that be?" He asked. She was quiet for a while; opening and closing her mouth several times as she started to speak, then changed her mind. Despite previous declarations, he had to admit that he could not tell what she was thinking.

"I don't know," she admitted. "I really don't know."

. . . . .

Alba slipped into the alley between the fishmonger and the post office, stepping around the refuse and greasy puddles to find Otilde huddled under an awning with a bucket of oysters in her lap. Her dark hair straggled over her moon-white shoulders, long since escaped from its braid, small threaded pearls occasionally striking the edge of the bucket with a clink.

"I made a friend," Otilde said with a lopsided grin, elbowing the door behind her. "He offered us the flat above the shop, if we wanted it."

"You told him no," Alba replied. She joined Otilde on the stoop and removed a bundle from under one arm.

"I didn't tell him anything," Otilde said. "It's nice, though. I forgot how-"

"-Human they are," Alba finished. "I know. I got these from an old-looking fellow who just cried at me the whole time." She unrolled two dresses, long white filmy summer-frocks, and some thin rubber sandals. Otilde plucked one of the shoes held it up for examination.

"Strange," she said.

"Everything is strange in this world," Alba agreed. "And they go on like they don't know about the other one."

"It does seem ridiculous that they keep it separate," Otilde agreed. "But safer for us. These...they don't believe in us anymore, can you tell? They don't believe in anything. It's sad, but it makes us safer."

"Here, anyway," Alba said. "But around Iphany's kind, perhaps not as much. They'll know what we are."

Otilde lapsed into silence, eyes still trained on the thin-soled sandal. Alba sensed the change in mood, the sudden pensiveness and prickle of fear.

"We're doing the right thing," she said, gently taking the sandal back. She bent down and slipped it on her sister's dirt-smeared foot. She did the same with the other, then put her own on, stretching her feet out to admire the turquoise straps. Otilde smiled and mirrored the gesture.

"Just like humans," she said, in a voice that was somehow full of both humor and sadness.

"For now," said Alba.

They put on their borrowed dresses and took turns wiping away dust and grime with the small bottle of water that Otilde had procured from the fishmonger's shop. As the town of Ullapool, a modest white jewel on a green crown of coastline, fell into the darker arms of evening, they emerged from the alley and slipped through the side-streets, past gawking men at pubs, who could not even find it in themselves to whistle in appreciation; down the cobbled lane towards the bay, where the comfortable voice of their mother lapped against rocks and soft patches of sand. Here they sang a quiet melody to hide themselves from any late-returning fishermen, lay back against each other, and waited for the moon to rise.


	20. Petrichor

A/N: Another long delay. Thanks for reading!

I'd like to take this opportunity to remind anyone still with me that this is not a "good" romance story. As in, the behavior of the characters is not behavior I would condone or encourage outside of fantasy. There will be some questionable moments here and there, so if you are easily triggered or a DV survivor, this may not be the story for you. That being said...if mild dubcon and a bit of sexy violence ( I know, I know…) is your thing, pull up a chair. 'Cause it's coming.

Petrichor

. . . . .

 _She did not sleep in the way of the living, but there were stretches of time when her vestigial mind phased out of consciousness and sunk down into the river of her memories. Yes, she would say, if she still had a voice and someone to use it on, the dead do dream._

 _She dreamed of the house at the edge of the moors. Stone and thatch, a bit leaky in the rain, but otherwise warm and comfortable. Half a herd of goats milled in the twilight woods, where the clearing began to erupt in bushes and thicket, perpetually slick from the undulating plumes of mist._

 _A calm life. A quiet life. A childless life, not for lack of trying. But so it goes, sometimes._

 _A safe life, until it wasn't._

 _They came for him at dusk, just after he'd stumbled up from the pens, trousers splotchy with mud and peat. He carried a milk bucket under one arm and a struggling kid under the other. She tsked a greeting as she examined the goat's injury. It was a shallow scrape along the fetlock, beginning to go green and stinking at the seams._

 _The foolish thing was bleating its head off. In the distance she could hear the nanny goat warbling in response, and the subsequent chorus of opinions from the rest of the herd._

" _I'll have him back to you in a moment!" She hollered over the din, not at all surprised when the noise did not subside._

" _Just going to slap a poultice on this and wrap it," she said as she hauled the kid over one shoulder and let herself into the house._

" _Ought to just let me…" He mumbled, without any real conviction._

" _Abraxas, don't start that again," she said._

" _I'm only joking," he replied. He swiped a hand over his forehead, leaving a gray streak of mud and who knew what else in his silvery-golden hair. She tossed a grin over her shoulder, struck with an ache of gratitude and wonder. Could she ever repay this man? This...wizard? The word still ruffled her mind with a rebellious thrill; this wizard from the manor-house, this man who left behind a life of every conceivable luxury to live on the brink of nowhere in a hut, his magic shuttered behind a love that should have never even been given the chance to learn the sound of her name._

 _But she stopped in her tracks, stopped thinking about her herb-pastes and linen bandages, stopped smiling entirely when she heard the distinct, echoing pop out in the woods._

" _A branch…" Abraxas said weakly, in the voice of a man who denies the storm even as the lightning strikes him down._

 _Half a dozen more cracks followed before he could finish._

" _You said they'd never find you," she whispered. "You said after a while, they'd turn it all over to your brother."_

 _Footsteps squelched through the boggy soil; she caught a glimpse of pale-haired heads and elegant robes passing outside the window. She put a hand over her breast, thinking it might stop the terrible pain clattering against her ribs. She set the kid down; it let out a confused 'blep' and hobbled towards the door on its wounded leg._

" _It was a good dream we had," she whispered as she gathered his hands in hers. He lay his forehead against the top of her head and let out a shallow breath._

" _It's over now," he whispered._

 _. . . . . ._

He summoned her in the middle of breakfast _again._

"I will be there as soon as I finish eating," she told the trembling house elf. She was starting to suspect that his timing was quite intentional. He'd given her a break the previous day, then called her back just as she'd been sitting down to tea.

As she slid a spoonful of lemon curd onto her scone, she idly traced the memories of yesterday, which mostly consisted of recalling his derision as she ran through her repertoire of spells. He'd had plenty to say about her 3rd-year equivalent Transfiguration skills, sounding much like her father when he refuted her explanations that her mixed-race heritage made certain magic all but inaccessible. He'd then spent another hour or so trying to get her to Apparate, first as a side-along, then on her own, with abysmal failure on both fronts. He sent her away with a sneer and that had been the end of things for the day.

"To be perfectly honest," she told Blat, who was coming around to fill up her teacup again, "I would have expected him to have given up already."

"Blat wonders if perhaops he _cannot_ give up," said the elf. Iphany sat back so hard her chair legs chuffed against the rug, shocked into silence by the relevance of the reply and its blistering truth. Unmindful of the effect her response had on the young witch, Blat finished her pouring and started to clear away the silverware and plates.

 _Perhaps he cannot give up._

She had half a mind to request seconds, just to stretch the hour out a bit further, but Yanna entered the sun-room and began his neurotic routine of pleas and bowing until she could not stand it anymore and flounced out of the room in a dramatic huff. Yanna went on ahead to inform the Master she was coming, so he did not see her slip down the corridor that led to the ballroom and the dungeons. Tendrils of cold slid around her ankles as she descended the stairs, and she was surprised that she had not noticed the change in temperature before. Sudden cold spots were notorious harbingers of ghostly activity, the books opined. Since ghosts could potentially interrupt a caster's spell, should they so desire, it was important to be able to sense them before they had a chance to muck anything up.

The dungeon door was still ajar, latch and deadbolt both branded with the blast marks of a spell. Iphany traced her fingers over the star-shaped black grooves etched into the iron, wondering why he had not just used the key.

 _Because that Manglis fellow probably had it,_ she thought with a nauseating shudder.

"Hello there," she called around the edge of the door, eyes swiftly adjusting to the interior darkness of the cell. "I came back, like I said I would."

For a while, nothing, save the uneven drip of water hitting the stone somewhere. Then the chill at her legs grew sharp and biting, and the hairs around her face stirred in a phantom breeze. From the corner a skeletal blue-white hand emerged, followed by an equally thin forearm, piece by wasted piece until the ghostly figure stood before her again, just as wretched and stomach-turning as Iphany remembered.

"Morning. Lovely day," she said, feeling quite stupid. "I ah...thanks again, for what you did. For helping me. Worked a treat, didn't it?"

The ghost floated in place, her mouth turned down. Iphany pressed a bit more into the room, though still kept one foot on the other side of the door. _Just in case._

"I do wish you could talk," she said. "It would be much easier to figure out your unfinished business if you could just-tell me what it is."

The woman tapped her mouth and then pointed at Iphany, motioning to her own transparent ears with her free hand.

"I heard your...I don't know, your feelings? If you can talk to me that way…"

The ghost shook her head and pointed at Iphany with both hands this time.

"It's me, not you?"

The ghost nodded.

"Well that should soften the blow of not being able to Apparate," she said with a twist of her mouth. A puzzled look passed over the ghost's hollow features, followed by a sputter of recognition. A similar spark flared in understanding in Iphany's mind.

"You didn't-You didn't know right away what Apparating was," she said. "You're not a witch."

The ghost nodded a confirmation, then held out both empty hands and pointed to Iphany's wand, as if to say, _See? None._

"But you were around magic," Iphany finished. "Not your whole life, but a little. Enough to recognize a few words." Another nod from the ghost, which she followed with a gesture at the walls around them.

"You learned of it...where, here? In the dungeon?"

The ghost shook her head and gestured again, arms sweeping a wide circle. Iphany frowned.

"I don't understand," she said. "Sorry."

Something dark rippled along the edge of the spirit's aura, galvanizing the atmosphere to plunge several more degrees. Iphany exhaled a breath that frosted white in the frigid air. The ghost advanced and lay a weightless hand on her shoulder; the spot prickled and burned, and Iphany took a sudden, jolting step backwards-

-nearly tripping over Yanna, who had appeared behind her.

"I am so sorry Mistress Iphany Novara, but you must-"

"Yeah, I'm coming," she said. She rubbed at the cold spot on her shoulder with a wince and glanced at the ghost, who was retreating back into the corner of the cell, her forlorn look renewed.

"I'll come back, I promise," she said. "I owe you my life, even though it's _kind of_ your fault I wound up down here in the first place."

If she hadn't vanished so quickly, Iphany would have sworn she saw the spectre grin.

. . . .

"Uh," said Iphany, not noticing this time when the doors slammed and locked behind her. "Who is _that?"_

A man sat in the center of the aisle leading to the hearth. He was lashed to an ordinary-looking desk chair, head lolling forward until his chin brushed his chest, eyes fluttering, mouth shaping soundless, mumbling words.

"I'm sure I don't know," said Lucius. He came from around a stack of books, sliding out of the shadows with an elegant, serpentine smirk. She mentally congratulated herself for not being startled by the suddenness of his appearance, and in the same thought realized it would be more surprising if he _didn't_ come skulking out from somewhere.

"Can you-I don't know, just be _standing_ there like a normal person for once?" Iphany asked, eyeing the stranger from her safe distance by the door. "You always seem like you're up to something."

"I am always up to something," he replied. "That is a Muggle of some regular variety. I found it working in a corner shop in Briar. I have retrieved it for you to practice on." He moved around behind the chair and gave it a friendly shove. The man's head bobbed on his neck and he muttered.

"Practice what?" Iphany asked. "And what's wrong with him?"

"Stupefied, for the moment," Lucius said. "Muggles don't recover as quickly as we do. You're to practice what we discussed yesterday. I have planted a belief in the Muggle's head. When it finally comes around, it will think you are a dangerous enemy who wishes to cause it great harm."

"Well that's not a very fair starting place," she said.

"On the contrary," Lucius replied. He shoved the chair again, and the Muggle jerked his head up, focusing blearily on her before slipping back into oblivion.

"Dumbledore will know exactly who and what you are, and you'd better believe he'll make sure Harry Potter knows, too. It's against the law to outright refuse entry to a student whose name is in the Hogwarts book, and your father had _previously_ done a fine job of becoming respectable, recent behavior notwithstanding. But that won't be enough for Dumbledore and his devoted band of dunderheads, who will have no qualms about associating you with your father's misdeeds." At that, a transitory frown ghosted across his brow. He shook it away and continued.

"This is but a small inkling of the handicap you'll be facing in your task. So in conclusion, you impudent child, this is _more_ than fair."

"Oh _fine,_ I get it," she said, rolling her eyes at the ceiling with a toss of her shining braids. Lucius' fingers tightened on the hilt of his cane and he took a deep, careful breath to cleanse the inappropriate mental image of her red-striped backside. Being forced to endure her disrespect without the pleasure of correcting it was the worst kind of torture, but he was smart enough to know that, should this all go well, the Dark Lord would want to know how she had been treated by the Malfoys. Insults could be explained as training. Stories of being caned -

 _I'd use my wand,_ came the rebellious, demented thought -

\- would not go over as well with his Master.

"I said, practice _what?"_ She demanded. There was an extra layer of salt in her temper today. Had Lucius been in a better frame of mind, he might have tried to seek the source. As it stood, his grasp on his own motives was tenuous at best. Poking the unpredictable psyche of a half-human teenager would not likely end well.

 _Afraid of her,_ said a small, pathetic, despicable voice inside.

"Once it's fully revived, you'll have to convince it you're a friend, not the enemy," Lucius finally answered. Iphany sighed and crossed her arms.

"That shouldn't be hard," she said. "I'll just tell him-"

" _Do_ shut up. There are rules," Lucius interrupted. She snapped her mouth shut and glared. He was being particularly rude this morning, wasn't he? If she wasn't so focused on the strange man in the chair, she might have asked him what had his wand in a knot. But the steel and stone of his narrowed eyes, fixed and probing when she could bring herself to meet them, forbade curiosity. For now.

"Go on then," she said. "What are the rules?"

"You cannot tell him why he is here or what is going on. You cannot tell him what you are. You cannot sing. You cannot touch. You cannot use your wand."

"Anything else?"

"You'll have three minutes," he said. " _Ennervate_!"

The man jerked in his chair and sat up with a gasp, his mild brown eyes wide with terror and shock. Lucius took several steps back so that he was out of the man's limited rage of sight, leaving only Iphany for him to focus on.

Iphany watched, fascinated, as the man took in his surroundings, his chest heaving and shoulders shuddering against the strain of the tethers. He had a mop of floppy black hair, a deep, sun-loved complexion, and a thick beard. She'd never seen a beard before, aside from in the portraits of a handful of her ancestors. It made him look friendly, like a bear cub or a very whiskery cat.

That innocuous comparison fizzled when his attention landed on her. First came the shock and incredulity at her appearance, soon replaced by whatever story Lucius had embedded in his mind. He strained against his bindings again, features assembled in a parliament of terror.

"You!" He bellowed. "Not you! Get out of here, get away from me!"

He bucked and thrashed in the chair, hard enough that the back legs lifted off the floor and landed on the carpet in a series of muffled thumps.

"Hey," she said. "You've got to calm down, you'll hurt yourself."

"Leave me alone, you! Demon! _Shaytan alkulba_!" He shouted. His words carried the weight of an accent she had never heard before, but whatever he'd said at the end was definitely not a blessing in his native tongue.

"I'm not whatever that is," she replied. He gnashed his teeth and moaned again. She glanced up at Lucius, who shrugged and tapped his wrist.

 _I'll be damned if I fail right out of the gate,_ she seethed. She took a few steps towards the struggling captive, settling into her mind as her consciousness brushed against her spirit-song, lying dormant and mute beneath its protective layers. She closed her eyes - briefly, not wanting to look too obvious - and drew the song up through the depths, feeling it rise up the column of her throat to settle on the back of her tongue.

 _Don't sing,_ she told herself, concentrating on the secret melody and willing it to infuse her next words with a sense of calm, comfort, safety, trust.

"I am not here to hurt you," She said, softly. The man's struggles ceased at once and he stared at her, jaw slack. She mentally crowed before continuing. "I'm going to-"

"Stop," Lucius called. "You're singing. Start over."

"I'm not singing!" She shouted. Enchantment broken, the man shook himself and resumed fighting and cursing.

"Yes you are. And you have less than two minutes left."

"I'm not!" She replied, clenching her fists and wishing she could hex him right out of those stupid shiny shoes.

"Ninety seconds," he answered.

 _I hate you so much,_ she thought. _Ok. Fine, I'm singing. So what was he blathering about yesterday? Tailoring the approach to the subject. Focusing on the person rather than my power._

She took one more moment to observe, to try and glean anything she could from her target at face value, having nothing to go on other than the knowledge of his false, powerful fear.

 _Fear. He's afraid. What do people need when they are afraid? Comfort?_

"Everything is going to be all right," she said. The man howled his terror and rage.

 _Nope._

"Thirty seconds," said Lucius. She pinched her own arm to keep from grabbing at her wand.

 _Not what do people need,_ she thought. _What does this particular man need when he is afraid?_

And then, faint as a whisper, she heard it. Like the mournful thought-song of the ghost, his deepest, most primordial emotions slid into her mind, up through the tangle of her own thoughts, and began to whisper.

 _Not whisper,_ she thought. _Sing. Everyone has a song. I am the only one who can hear it._

She approached the man again, but this time, she did not speak just yet. She fell to her knees before him, lay her palms on her thighs, looked up.

 _Scared scared scared scared powerless evil woman powerless cannot powerless_

He glanced down at her. The song stumbled.

 _Powerless powerless scared_

 _powerless…?_

"I am your servant," she said. "You are the master here. I mean you no harm."

The man blinked several times in succession. He stopped struggling. She watched the enchantment sloughing away in nearly visible sheets, until the terrified animal of prey was replaced by a cocksure, smarmy git who ogled her like she was his next meal.

" 'Elo, beautiful girl," he said. "Don't know why I'm tied to this chair, but if you stay on your knees and get a little closer, I won't care anym-"

Iphany saw the silver blur of the cane before she recognized the man at the other end of it, his face contorted into a furious snarl. The Muggle's eyes bulged as the the strike knocked him sideways, carrying enough force to send him tipping over to the stone floor with a painful-sounding thud. Lucius stood over him, looking not at the Muggle but at his hands; wand in one, cane in the other, silver fang-tips smeared with blood. He frowned at the cane, as though he could not understand why he had used it, then shook himself and looked back at the twitching pile of limbs. The puzzled scowl transformed into a grimace, his teeth bared, eyes dark and glinting, lips pulled back in a predatory smile.

Iphany found herself shrinking instinctively away, body reacting to the threat even as her mind remained calm.

"Is he dead?" She asked. Her hands crept up to knead the tension needling the muscles of her arms and neck, fingers stroking as they might a wounded, wild animal. The murderous look scudded out of his eyes at the sound of her voice, and then he straightened up and regarded her down the bridge of his narrow nose. He pressed his lips together and nudged the man with the shiny toe of his boot.

"No," he said, his voice flat, "Just knocked out."

"You walloped him good," she said. "What for?"

Lucius turned his head away, seeming to observe some distant spot in the shadows, his hair slipping over one shoulder to obscure a very peculiar expression. It was a look she later convinced herself she had imagined, because the incongruity of Lucius Malfoy looking embarrassed was far too vast to reconcile.

"I do not care for lewdness," he said after a while. "And certainly not from Muggle filth."

"All he said was something about being on my knees, which I was. How is that lewd? He didn't like feeling powerless, especially not to a woman. So I made him feel powerful." She shrugged, finally rising from her position with a small wince at the ache in her legs. "Did I sing that time?"

Lucius was quite proud of himself for not staring at her in open mouthed incredulity. She had absolutely no idea what the man had been implying. The leer in his eyes and the lustful nastiness in his words were flashing signs to which she seemed utterly blind.

How was she supposed to seduce Harry Potter when she couldn't grasp such a blaring innuendo? He had a brief, hysterical vision of storming Azkaban, finding Icarus Novara, and dropping him out of a window.

"No," he replied, after too long. "You didn't. Iphany-"

A broken groan floated up from the floor. Lucius snapped his wand in a terse arc and the man was silenced.

"I did well," she said. A small line formed between her brows as she considered this idea. In a moment, she lifted her eyes to him - shockingly clear aqua green, bright as lamplight in her ivory face. She smiled at him: a real, genuine thing, not a polite half-quirk of her lips, not a self-satisfied smirk. For several seconds, Lucius forgot to breathe, until the lack of oxygen made the edges of his vision start to gray.

He had become so still that Iphany considered waving her hand in front of his utterly blank face to make sure he was still alive. It made her want to search the shadows behind her, to throw stones into the darkness to see what lurking things might be flushed out. But just as she was about to snap her fingers under his nose he spoke again, a thin-voiced question.

"Pardon?"

"I said I did - nevermind," she sighed. She crossed in front of him and squatted down next to the Muggle, who was murmuring a string of foreign words under his breath as blood from the gash on his forehead struck a scarlet rivulet across his eyelids.

"So now what, do we take him back?"

"Not just yet," said Lucius. "I'll wipe its memory and you'll try one more time, this time I will give it a stronger, more tactile memory to associate with you - killing a loved one, perhaps, in cold blood. The more hatred and fear it has of you, the harder it will be to break the enchantment."

"Can't I just do the same thing again?" She asked.

"No," said Lucius, more forcefully than was necessary. "No. Changing the false memory will change the way it reacts to you. You'll have to figure out how to get around whatever blocks are in place while still seeming...human."

While he spoke, he righted the man in the chair, healed the forehead scrape, cleaned up the blood streaking down his face. Then he crossed behind him again and readied his wand at the man's temple, with the other hand cupped and hovering on the opposite side.

"Why do you call him 'it?'", she asked, just as he drew a breath to speak the words of the memory-altering spell.

"Because _it_ is a Muggle. They have overrun this world like cockroaches while we skulk and hide in the shadows out of fear. The Dark Lord will change all of that," he replied. She cocked her head, eyeing him in that even, unsettling way. Was she questioning his reasons? Was he judging his words? Why did it matter? Why did he care?

"Are you ready?"

"Yes," she said, heaving a gusty sigh. "I'm ready." The tension in her muscles had rooted deeper instead of dissipating, making her limbs feel heavy and useless. It was still three weeks until the next full moon; she should not be this tired.

Lucius performed the spell and the man jolted in the chair, half-lidded eyes snapping open. Iphany watched as the confusion on his face whetted a growing hatred until it was as keen as the edge of a carving knife. He pulled a menacing grimace.

"I will _end_ you," he rasped. "How can you stand there after what you did?"

This time it was harder for Iphany to push through the rough terrain of his surface-level emotions, both because they were louder and more defined, and because she could not shake the aching exhaustion radiating from inside. She tried twice before stumbling back with an exasperated grunt.

"Can't do it," she said. "He's fighting me too hard." She did not want to admit the real reason: that she was so weary she could barely keep her eyes open.

"You have no stamina," Lucius observed. "Does this happen when you practice spells, too?"

"No," she said, right before her mouth gaped in a face-splitting yawn. "This has never happened to me before." She gave herself a quick mental slap and steadied on her feet. "I can do it. Just-give me a moment."

She dug in and stood straight, willing her mind to brush against his, a bit more gently this time. She still met the same anger and resistance, but caught at the periphery a hint of another feeling, one wrought in a melody rather than malice. Like a mirage it seemed to fade the more she moved towards it, a shimmering heat-stamp in a vast desert sea. On the verge of giving up again, she noticed the strain in her own body, the thunder of her heart, the slickness of sweat pooled in the hollows of her collarbones.

 _I'm trying too hard,_ she thought. _Chasing something that cannot be caught._

But even with this realization, she knew she had pushed herself and her newfound ability too far. After several moments of merely listening without attempting to grab hold of the man's subconscious, she had to admit defeat, which came in the way of slumping down to the floor with a groan.

"Too tired," she said. "I tried."

"Up," said Lucius, his tone brooking no argument. She looked up at him, too weak to give him a scathing glare.

"I just said I _can't,_ " she replied. "I'm worn out."

"Which is exactly why you must continue. Get up, girl."

"Stop calling me that," she said, without any real conviction. "Can I do it from the floor?" She lowered herself to her elbows and then her back, thinking that she had never felt anything so comfortable as the cold stone beneath a thin oriental carpet.

His footsteps came so quickly that she did not even have time to open her eyes or voice a protest. One moment she was sprawled out on the ground, contemplating sleep, and the next she was on her feet, a pair of hands holding her up by either arm. Through all of this the Muggle watched in rage-veiled suspicion, waging a battle between his true feelings and the false ones he had been given.

"Focus," Lucius barked, giving her arms a terse little shake. A feather of revulsion brushed against her fatigue, giving her the strength to pull away and steady herself on capricious, quivering legs. He was quick to back away when she proved herself capable of standing on her own, hands thrust into his pockets.

"Fine," she said. "If I faint on your floor you just let me lie there."

Lucius stood back and watched her shoulders rise and fall, watched her fingers flit up to fling a braid over her shoulder, watched the muscle in her jaw twitch as she craned around to scowl at him. He convinced his face to remain impassive and shoved his hands in his pockets so he would not be tempted to grab her for an entirely different reason. Resentment dampened the unwelcome arousal smoldering like a banked fire beneath a thinning crust of snow. It was not fair that his body compelled him to desire someone so singularly infuriating.

She turned back to the Muggle, done with dagger-glaring. The Muggle howled his protests, straining against his bonds as she approached him.

"Don't get too close," Lucius warned.

"I have to," he heard her say. Her voice was an unsung aria melting over the words; musical without a melody, dark with a crackling power that made his stomach turn over in sudden fear.

"Too close, Iphany," he said. She was inches away from the Muggle now, and reaching for the very ordinary ropes that bound him to the chair.

"What are you _doing?"_ He shouted, lunging forward - too late, despite her professed tiredness her fingers moved with surprising dexterity, picking apart the knots in less than the time it took him to reach her.

"This is what he wants," she whispered. "Stay back."

Lucius planned on doing no such thing - the Muggle was loose now and rising from the chair with murder in his addled eyes - but he was rooted to the spot, somehow frozen in place by the power firing from the brink of her voice.

So he could not move as the Muggle shot out of the chair and wrapped his hands around the Siren's throat.


	21. Revelations

A/N: Welcome back! Still with me? Enjoying ourselves? Thanks to everyone who is still hanging in there. I realize this is not the typical fan fiction (being more inspired-by than derivative) and so likely attracts a limited audience, but it's helping me work on my own personal projects and giving me a nice break from reality. Plus, Lucius Malfoy.

. . . . .

"Otilde, what's wrong?"

Otilde turned her face to the evening above, to the silver light fractured by a tangled canopy of elm and oak. She had fallen in love with the trees at once, each slow spirit rooted to the earth; unmoving, yet still vibrant and alive. They whispered amongst themselves about the strange two-legged cousins who _almost_ looked human. She could not quite understand them, but as children of ancients they shared a connection with the world that she had not known existed outside of the waters they called home. She wondered how many others there were, how many eternal lines sprung from Sun and Sky and Earth and Fire. Were they bound to humans, like she was?

The distant chord of pain rang out again, harsh and jarring. She flinched and pressed a hand to her forehead.

"Another verse gone," she said. "Why is it unravelling so quickly?"

"Iphany," said Alba, understanding. She joined Otilde in the center of the stream, bending to hum a gentle melody in her sister's ear. Otilde did her best to allow the comforting song to do its work, but her mind insisted on replaying the cry of sorrow and pain over and over and over again, an endless loop of suffering that she could neither hide nor heal.

"She will be so vulnerable if it falls apart," Otilde said.

"You said we wouldn't have been able to sense and find her if it hadn't begun to fail, so we can be grateful for that, at least."

"But if it fails before we get there, she will be in danger. I had not realized it stifled so many of her abilities, it was only meant to shelter her spirit from the harshness of the human world. Ilia should have known how hard it would be on her when it finally gave out. She won't be able to control herself."

"Maybe she did know," Alba said. "She had your gift, after all."

"I would like to believe she knew something I did not," Otilde said. "But there is different magic at work in her, a kind we do not understand. Perhaps Ilia did not consider what would happen if Iphany had both. She might not have expected the man to teach her."

"It will only make her stronger," Alba replied, her voice round and buoyant.

Otilde felt a rare flush of annoyance at her youngest sister's optimism. She had taken on the weight of Renali's determination and distrust for the humans, while Alba remained herself, relentlessly hopeful, blind to the perils of the human world. The burden of leadership was thrust upon her without consent, jostling out her natural visions of the future and the path ahead. Loose thoughts and formless images rattled around in her mind, crashed and banged into each other, never fully able to converge in a sense of what was to come. Though her precognition was in no way flawless, she should have at least been able to predict when Ilia's spell would rupture and spill its dark contents into Iphany's unsuspecting mind. Otilde supposed that Ilia had thought it would hold until Iphany completed her task, and that the three of them would be able to help the young girl navigate the chaos of her memories. That, as it had turned out, would not be the case. She wanted to scream her grief and frustration at the stars, to curse the Moon for his cold, unfeeling silence, beg the Sea to bring Renali back.

"Oh, Alba," was all she said.

. . . . . .

 _Her father above, his face a paradigm of grief and terror, his hands at her throat, thumbs in her windpipe, crushing and sobbing, tears raining warm on her cheeks. Salt in her mouth. A black pulse in her ears, burning chest, heart limping towards silence._

 _That, at least, would be something. Something new and strange, death._

 _And what do you want?_

 _I do not know._

 _But I do_ not _want to die today. Today, I want to survive._

 _I want._

 _I want._

 _I want._

 _A small, insignificant snip, like a thread on a dress that has become too tight. The desire to live trickled out from behind the newly created fissure, first a gentle hymn, then a trio of voices, finally a choir roaring from the heavens and the waters of the world. You are our daughter. You are a child of the Moon and the Sea and the Men who gaze in wonder and awe and fear. You are powerful. You are real. Teach them not to gaze, but kneel._

 _I want. I don't know what._

 _But I_ _ **want.**_

Iphany crawled from the grave of unconsciousness with a strangled gasp. The warm, dry air of the library rushed into her lungs, coaxed tears of relief to her eyes. She dashed them away with a shaking hand. A volley of cursing and motion stirred behind her, followed by footsteps and a shadow over her shoulders.

She started to speak, but her voice rasped impotently against her injured throat. The shadow moved and a pair of fine-stitched gray trousers and shining wing-tipped boots entered her field of vision.

Lucius crouched down in front of her, his expression a mixture of panic and outrage.

"Are you all right?"

"I'm-" she swallowed the knife of pain and nodded an affirmative. He studied her intently, eyes dropping to her neck and narrowing at what he saw there.

'What happened?' She mouthed, though he did not seem to be paying attention. With every passing moment the pain in her throat seemed to meet and surpass a new threshold, and her breath came in thin, strident bursts.

"Your throat is crushed," said Lucius. "I have to heal it now."

She raised an eyebrow to say 'What are you waiting for?' and he settled back to meet her gaze.

"I've got to touch you," he said. She shrugged and motioned for him to continue. He canted his head, a quizzical frown replacing the fading panic. One hand palmed and pointed his wand, while the other reached out to close the distance between them. As his hesitant fingertips met her skin, a thought thudded into the forefront of her mind - _I do not like to be touched._

Except…

His bare fingers were soft and warm. Businesslike, yet gentle, he traced a path down the ridge of her injured throat, eliciting a flinch, but no flight. He performed the motion three more times, murmuring the words of the healing spell. She could not, for some unknown reason, stop staring at his face. Had his cool gray eyes always been so full of dark mirth and wisdom? She could not recall noticing his mouth before, but now she saw it held a shape suggesting the curve of a wicked smile. A shadow of stubble ran along the cut of his strong jaw. She had a horrifying urge to run the backs of her fingers over his cheeks to see how it might feel.

 _Something is wrong with me,_ she thought with genuine alarm. But before she had time to follow that idea past its intrusion, she felt a flare of heat in her throat that crested in a searing prickle and subsided to leave no trace of pain or injury. Lucius sat back at once and withdrew his hand. Iphany watched as it returned to his side, grasping until it found and clutched a fist full of the fabric of his robe. She snapped her gaze back up to his eyes, noting that his features were stitched with intense, unwilling concentration.

"Can you speak now?" He asked.

"Yeah," she said. She dragged her attention away from his mouth. "I don't remember-I was on the floor, you made me get up. Did I do it? I saw-"

 _I saw my father's face above me as he tried to choke me to death._

Her heart vaulted into a rapid patter, and she hauled herself to standing. Clear across the room, slumped against the door, was a man; not her father, of course. The Muggle with the beard.

"Is his neck supposed to bend that way?" She asked. Lucius let out an ungentlemanly snort.

"Not at all," he replied. "He is dead."

"What'd you do? I was doing well, I thought," she replied. He stared at her for several seconds, his brows half-raised. " _What?"_ she snapped, wishing he would stop gawking at her like that every time she opened her mouth.

"I didn't do anything. You, on the other hand, went into some kind of trance, froze me in place, untied it, and promptly got yourself strangled half to death."

"Oh _please_ blame me," she said, rolling her eyes at the vaulted ceiling. "You're the one who kept pushing me. So how'd he wind up across the room? Did you whack him again?"

"I did not. I was thoroughly incapacitated. You lost consciousness, and then all of a sudden the Muggle went flying and hit the wall. I am certain he died instantly."

"Ooh," said Iphany. "I killed him?"

"I certainly didn't. You appear to have discharged some odd surge of magic just as you went under. And lucky for you, since you managed to hold me in place for quite a few moments."

Rather than sounding upset by the notion, Lucius thought she appeared, of all things, intrigued. She made her way towards the door, smoothing the rucked-up folds of her robes as she walked. Her steps were uneven and dragging, her shoulders hunched in obvious exhaustion. She paused once to catch her balance with a hand against a bookshelf, and he heard her mutter something disparaging to herself under her breath. He could not help the smile of admiration tugging at the corner of his lips.

 _Determined little thing,_ he thought.

He followed her to the spot where the Muggle lay, quiet and broken, limbs stuck out at awkward angles. A knob of a bone that had no business being there distended the skin of his neck.

Before he could stop her, she crouched again, wobbling a bit on her way down, and bent to stroke the dead Muggle's wiry beard. Lucius tsked in disgust, unable to stop himself from reaching out to snatch her elbow. He dragged her away to the tune of a squawk of protest.

"Hey!" She jerked her arm away from his grasp and scowled. "I just wanted to know what it felt like!"

"You don't go around touching dead people," he sighed, in disbelief that this was a thing that needed to be said out loud. "Besides, that's a Muggle. A perfect world would be one where they did not exist at all, and here you are poking one like a toad you trapped in a jar."

She raised her chin at him and sniffed.

"I don't care for toads," she said, and he laughed in spite of himself. After a moment, that damnable smile - blue sky between storm clouds, the first rays of moonlight cooling the glow of dusk - spread across her face. It was quickly replaced by an enormous yawn. She rubbed her eyes and skirted to the side to avoid leaning against the corpse, instead allowing her shoulders and the back of her head to thud against the door.

"I'm so _tired,"_ she said.

"I'm not familiar with the sort of magic your ki-you possess. I would think it came naturally enough that it wouldn't cost you so much energy."

"I've never really gotten to use it before," she said. Her eyes drifted closed. "My body kind of hurts."

"Well, you did get slammed onto a stone floor," Lucius replied. "Tends to leave a few bruises." He decided not to mention the way the Muggle, torn between manufactured fury and relentless desire, had pinned her small body to the floor between his knees, grinding his hips against hers even as his fingers dug into the column of her throat. White-hot rage ran its sandpaper tongue against his ribcage. He wished she'd left a bit of the Muggle alive, just to make him suffer before finishing the job himself.

"It's not that," she said, sliding in and out of a drowsy whisper. The tone of her voice, unintentionally warm and husky, invited a feeling far more pervasive than anger.

"No?" Somehow, and for no discernible reason, he was afraid of what she might say next.

"No," she replied. Her lids opened halfway, dusky lashes backlit by dreamy, unfocused eyes. "Not like bruises. It's inside. It's like…" She paused, roused a bit from her reverie, surprised by her realization. "I'm...hungry."

Lucius' mouth went dry and he drew very still.

"You should rest," he said, livid with himself, with his gentle voice, the tenderness behind it. She nodded and reached for the doorknob behind her, missing by quite a few centimeters, and abandoned her attempts with a plaintive groan.

"Can't I rest down here?"

"You cannot," he replied.

"I'm going to," she said, and slid down the door, mouth gaping in another enormous yawn. "Just you get rid of my friend there, and I'll sleep on the floor. I don't care."

"I care," Lucius replied. "Up with you, girl. This is a civilized house."

"Bother your stupid house," she said, and then rolled over to her knees and spread herself out face-down across the runner with her face tucked into the crook of her arm.

She hadn't even the strength to protest when his hands snaked around her middle, and he lifted her up from the ground. All she managed was a feeble, half-hearted swat at his shoulder before feeling one arm tuck itself under her knees and the other bend to wrap her shoulders.

 _This is lovely,_ she thought. _I should have someone carry me around everywhere._ The rhythm of his footsteps, the sway of her body moving with his stride. The unusual thunder of a heartbeat, audible even through the layers of his shirt and waistcoat. She dropped her head against his chest, decided for that moment that she would forget what a bossy, self-important git he was. After all, he _did_ smell nice. A hint of cedar, a kiss of smoke, the spice of some exotic fragrance, the pleasant redolence of magic, which had its own unique scent: the smell of the air just before the rain begins.

The next thing she recalled was being deposited on her bed, and Blat's frenzy of inquiries as to her Mistress' condition. The elf removed her boots and stockings, drew the curtains, and she knew no more.

Lucius stood outside her door, tongue in his teeth, a balled fist driving against his thigh.

 _Damn you, Icarus Novara. Damn you and damn your wife and damn your stupid daughter._

. . . . .

Lucius considered doing a number of things after he pried himself away from her door and stalked down the long hallway back to the interior wing of the manor. He owed Fudge a visit and a handful of Galleons. There was the half-completed letter to the Hogwarts Governor's Board, regarding an upcoming vote on a mandatory pre-roommate assignment blood-status disclosure. He had to come up with something for Naricissa's birthday-

He skidded to a halt at the base of the stairs, simmering desire and frustration doused in an instant. The loss hit him anew, just as it did every time an idea crept in still infected with parasitic notion that she was alive. Resentment and sorrow skimmed the river of his thoughts, etched their conflicting stories on the canvas of his body; a slight clenching tremble in his hands, a bowstring tension in his shoulders, a transitory sting behind his eyes.

And then as quickly as she had been banished, the girl came pirouetting back into his head. Any semblance of grief cowered before the surge of anger flooding his body. He set his jaw, teeth gritted and bared, a hand shooting out of its own volition to strike the elegant wooden bannister at the base of the stairs.

 _She won't even allow me the solace of my thoughts,_ he seethed, pounding the wood again with a fist that was beginning to ache from the blows. Never in his life had he known such a nebulous hold on his own mind. As a passable Leglimens he had done his share of mental training, sharpened his ability to control and direct his attentions, to hide or reveal what he wished, both to his own consciousness and any prying from the outside. He ought to be able to put her out of focus, to seal her up in a fortress of cerebral stone walls. Ought to, but could not.

 _It would get better if you fucked her, just once,_ came the rude, intrusive, impolite- _entirely_ sensible internal voice. _Too bad that's not even in the realm of reality. At this point I'd just take someone who looks like her, though that, too, would be equally impossible._

He stopped grousing at himself and stared straight ahead, the simplicity of the idea knocking him momentarily senseless.

 _Or is it?_

 _. . . . . ._

A timid, elfish-sounding knock rattled the door of his bedroom.

"Enter," he called, capping the Floo powder before returning it to the mantle. The elf shouldered his way inside, a hangdog look in his enormous eyes and a small, silk-lined envelope tucked into the ratty rope holding his rags up.

"I assume by your presence you were successful," Lucius said. Yanna nodded slowly, extracted the envelope from his belt, and passed it to his Master.

"Dismissed," Lucius said. The elf bowed his way out of the room and shut the door.

Lucius resisted the urge to open the envelope, lest he lose any of its clandestine contents. Instead he turned back to the hearth and pitched the Floo powder, and when the flames boiled emerald he spoke his destination, knelt so that his voice would be audible through the connection, and called out:

"Maidne?"

Nothing for a moment, no answer or shadow of movement from within the fire. He sat back and dabbed at the perspiration along his brow. Then the green flames parted and Maidne Lestrange stepped into his bedroom.

"Lucius," she said, her pretty face twisted up in a sly grin. "It's not even noon." She threw her riotous auburn curls over one shoulder and planted a hand on her hip. "I could have been indisposed, you know."

"Then lucky for me, you were not," he replied. She gave him a wink and looked down to dust the ash from her well-tailored robes, then closed the scant distance between them with a smile. Her hands landed on his shoulders, fingertips pressing into the painful tension there. Her brows shot up and she pulled a face ripe with mock-pity.

"Awfully pent up," she said. "It _has_ been a while."

He plucked her fingers delicately from his shoulders, careful to mask the cold thorn of revulsion poking at his gut. Her face darkened as she registered the refusal, lower lip thrust out in a fetching pout. Lucius wasn't fetched, but he knew he must navigate her expectations with care. Maidne was a formidable lover, with the potential to be an even more formidable enemy. So despite the unwelcome feeling of wrongness in the gesture, he gathered her hands in his and pressed a kiss to her fingertips.

"Later," he said, infusing the word with promise. Her featured smoothed out and she looked up at him with keen, expectant eyes.

"How is your strapping husband?" He asked as he peeled away from the embrace and withdrew his wand to summon a crystal-carved decanter full of amber liquid from the bar set over the fireplace. Maidne let out a yip of laughter and sat herself on the end of his bed.

"Still cheating Death on an hourly basis," She replied. "I honestly believe that at this point, he's holding on out of sheer spite."

"Not for you, angelic nymph that you are," Lucius said, sending her drink over to her with a swish of his wand.

"Oh, of course not. I'm still responsible for the stars in the sky and the depths of the sea. Thanks," she said as she accepted the snifter of firewhiskey and knocked in back without a trace of a grimace. Lucius crossed to refill it as she continued.

"It's his rotten children, acting like infants, the lot of them. They've accused me of all kinds of mischief, from love potions to Imperius. Say I'm a ladder-climbing New-Blood, that no matter what I'll never _really_ belong in the sacred twenty eight." She quaffed the second drink and waved off a third, her mouth slanting into a cheshire grin. "They've no idea he's already written them out of the will."

Lucius joined her at the foot of the bed, deftly shifting his weight to avoid allowing her to place a hand on his thigh. He hadn't the presence of mind to examine the abrupt repugnance, but it was becoming harder and harder to hide.

 _Get to the point,_ he told himself. He swirled the gold-burnished liquid in his glass and cleared his throat.

"What if I could give you the security that your inheritance cannot?"

Her hand had been creeping across the coverlet towards him, but she paused, fingers positioned just beneath the chandelier so that her quartet of ruby and emerald rings caught and returned an array of sparkling light. Lucius took the pause as intrigue and reached over to trace his thumb over her knuckles.

"I'm listening," she said, her words composed of careful indifference.

"I have an arrangement I wish to propose. It will be exactly the same as the one we have now-" Here he trailed off, lifting his hand to court the line of her jaw. He slid his fingers around the back of her neck, fingers threaded through wild, coppery curls. She let out a satisfied hum and leaned in to the touch.

"-the same, truly. With one small, insignificant change."

She cocked her head and regarded him without comment.

"Are you interested?" He asked, when she offered no reply or refutations. Her narrow chin bobbed in a nod, and Lucius rewarded her with a particularly beatific smile.

"I won't join up with…" She lowered her eyes to indicate the dark mark, visible under the border of his unbuttoned wrist cuffs. He shook his head and raised both hands in acquiescence.

"I would not ask it of you," he assured her. _He would not have you, anyway._ "It's much simpler than that. Just a little potion, a harmless thing. Each time we meet."

At the word potion, her focus strayed from his arm and wandered back to his face. Suspicion flashed in her amber gaze.

"What kind of potion?"

. . . . .

Iphany woke to the sweaty delirium of an unexpected nap, unable to process the improprietous presence of sunlight. She heaved her body over with a groan and saw scraps of blue sky peeking through the half-drawn balcony curtains. Had she ever once in her life intentionally slept during the _day?_

Roused and whirring, her mind sifted through the last moments in the library, ordering the flashes of memory from the first wave of exhaustion to the dying-dreams of celestial voices as her body surrendered to the violence it endured. And the denouement: Lucius' concern and anger, healing her wound, carrying her up the stairs. She swallowed around a phantom twinge, feeling her skin ripple under her fingers, and realized she was unconsciously tracing the same path he had taken, a feather-stroke from chin to collarbone.

A spontaneous hunger gnarled through her belly, much as it had in the moments before Lucius swept her up and bore her to bed. She flung herself up and out from the covers, searching the corners for Blat. The elf appeared at her knees, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

"Mistress Iphany Novara, Blat is _so_ sorry she did not bring you your lunch while you slept. Blat often sleeps during the day, since Mistress is up most nights." The elf stifled a yawn and straightened her shift. "It is past noon, I will bring something up at once."

"See that you do," Iphany replied. "And lots of it, too. I'm starved." As if to prove her point the hunger struck another pang inside, resounding through an emptiness she had never noticed before.

Blat disappeared and Iphany went to the vanity to straighten her disheveled robe and braids. She did her best tucking the escaped locks of hair back into their proper place, but just as she was about to step away from the mirror, she noticed something strange. A closer look at the blue-black tendril revealed what she'd seen in her reflection. Someone had cut off a chunk of her hair. The ends were slanted and jagged, as though the job had been done in a hurry. Dismayed, and more than a little disturbed, she whirled around and scanned the room as though the perpetrator might have concealed themselves behind the curtains or under the bed. She bent down to examine the latter and found nothing but spotless marble, then rolled her eyes at herself and straightened just in time to see Blat reappear with the lunch tray.

"Oh _good,_ " she breathed, the mystery hair-thief momentarily forgotten. Blat set the tray down on the small dining table beneath the eastern windows, and Iphany hovered impatiently as the elf arranged the legion of flatware, unfolded her napkin, and filled her glass with salted water. Was eating always this much of a _production?_ She waved Blat away as she tried to fiddle with the silver some more, and took to flinging the covers off of the serving dishes and loading her plate with food herself. She took several of the small tuna sandwiches, a teetering pile of salted crisps, filled her side plate to overflowing with a chopped fruit salad with sesame dressing. The smell of food was at once both overwhelmingly new and familiar - she knew she had not suddenly gained some additional sense, but could not remember her mouth watering at the fragrance of cut-up strawberries before.

If the smell was novel, the taste was extraordinary. She held a bite of sandwich in her mouth and closed her eyes, tongue working to decipher the glorious variety of flavors - the silky hint of lemon in the mayonnaise, the brine and bite of smoked tuna, the earthy crunch of celery between her teeth. Nothing had ever tasted so good, until she moved on to the fruit, and could not hold back a groan of pleasure. Every morsel was unique, textures met and mingled, salt enhanced the sweetness of the berries, the buttery croissants melted in her mouth.

When she came back to herself, many moments later, the serving trays were completely empty and Blat watched from the sidelines, her eyes round with incredulity.

"Was...Mistress Iphany Novara...hungry?" The elf asked. Iphany gave a shrug and patted her stomach.

"I guess I was," she replied. "Where's the pudding?"

. . . . .


	22. Elegy

Elegy

A/N: So sorry for the delay. It was a long one, I know. But I am back and will be updating regularly again, so thanks to all who followed/favorited this story - if you're still with me, I appreciate the patience and let me know if you're still enjoying!

Content warning for...weirdness. But if you're here you probably won't be surprised.

. . . . .

At five past nine, Gerald went into the back garden to let the dog out one last time. He leaned against the door frame as the ancient poodle snuffled around in the hedges, rooting up toads while studiously avoiding the patch of grass where she was supposed to do her business.

"Come on there," he said through a yawn, when the dog circled the perimeter for the third time. "You wet the carpet again and I'm gonna start feedin' you that rotten kibble from the corner shop instead of liver and rice like your ma insists." Clearly he would do no such thing, both because the dog was long missing several back teeth and because Irma would make _him_ eat the kibble if he tried it. He let out a gusty sigh as the poodle squatted over an interesting spot, then righted herself and resumed her patrol.

"That the stars must align," Gerald grumbled. "Look here, I'll show you." He threw a furtive glance through the window to make sure Irma wasn't up rummaging for a snack and freed his belt to relieve himself in the grass. The dog wandered over to investigate, and Gerald thought he might _finally_ be rid of his task when she stopped short, lifted her milky eyes, and started to growl.

"Oy," Gerald said. "Mind your business, would you?"

The poodle continued to growl, and not in the ornery way she did when she heard squirrels skittering around the attic, but in a soft, inquisitive dog-voice, punctuated by the sharp tilt of her head, as though the gesture might help her understand what it was she sensed up there between the cloud-dusted stars.

Gerald was intrigued enough to follow the unreliable gaze, expecting to see a flock of geese or perhaps a circling hawk, the latter known for snatching small dogs when rabbits or rats were scarce.

What he saw instead stayed a secret until just moments before his soul wriggled out of his body, paused to contemplate the papery husk lying pale in the hospital bed, then slithered towards the mysterious beyond. Being a proud and practical man, he did not want to see his eldest son's incredulous reaction when he finally whispered the truth of what he'd seen that night.

 _Wings wider across than a man's arms. Golden skin gone opal in the moonlight. Ribbons of silver-blue hair. The most beautiful face I have ever seen. Legs neither flesh nor fowl, but both. And the song...oh, Eddie, my son. The song. The song. The song._

. . . . .

Otilde let her bare shoulders fall against the rough bark of the yew, the impact loosening a sigh that stuck like a hot bruise in her chest. A slender figure fluttered through the maze of forest, dragging a cape of salt and sea as the breeze from her wings stirred the still summer air.

"That was _glorious,_ " Alba said as she landed, her golden skin flush with excitement. "You have to try, Otilde. Oh, it's been so long, I forgot how wonderful it feels!" She spread her wings to their full span, admiring the arm-length pinions, the ebony bands scattered through the lighter plumage. Otilde forced a smile as she approached her sister. The electric blue luminescence that usually only traced their skin while in the water was on full display, bright enough to fill the small glade with shadows, burning three-toed footprints in the ground as she walked. The bird-like angles of her legs were downed with more feathers in shades of snow and shadow, ending in half-webbed, taloned black toes.

"Not since the Greeks," Otilde murmured. "He told everyone we were dragging men to their deaths."

"It's not our fault they couldn't swim," Alba said with an uncharacteristically mean-spirited giggle. "And all that nonsense about plugging his ears with wax...what would he be, her great-great-great…"

"Grandfather, and too many to count," Otilde replied. "Poetic, isn't it?"

"I suppose," Alba said. The mischievous sparkle abandoned her eyes and she frowned. "It doesn't feel right, you know. Revenge. We need them as much as they need us."

"Hardly," Otilde scoffed. "I have known enough men in my time on this earth."

"But Iphany...and Ilia, and...all the others. They were all part hu-"

"No," Otilde replied. "No. We were told - Renali said the Lord and the Lady told her any child of our bodies is no more human than we are. There are no _half_ Sirens, Alba. Otherwise Ilia would have been nothing more than a human with dreams of the sea, so far removed was she from my first daughter. Iphany belongs with us, and as soon as she brings the Dark One to us, she will help restore all we lost."

"Renali said," Alba replied quietly. "You didn't hear it from-"

Otilde narrowed her eyes, daring her sister to continue.

"Never mind me," Alba said. "I worry about you, Otilde. Your connection with her is hurting you. I can see it. Every shard of pain and confusion that she feels might as well be your own. How long has it been since you've had a clear vision of our path?"

"It doesn't matter," Otilde replied. She reached out and drew the tips of her fingers over a sleek white feather, features aglow in Alba's light. "You'll have to help me, I was never as good at the half-Shift as you and Renali. We will practice tonight, and rest tomorrow, and continue on come evening. I still feel Iphany pulling me southward, stronger with every step we take. We must find her before…"

Otilde paused, her mind creating and rejecting a thousand different outcomes of the failed enchantment. Not one of them was comforting.

"Of course I'll help you," Alba replied. "We're going to find her. I know we will."

Otilde's mouth twisted in a smile that held no hint of joy, and she nodded.

. . . . .

Iphany let her eyes flutter closed as she slipped out of her robes. The fine silk slid from her shoulders and puddled at her feet, drawing a line of shivers from the nape of her neck to the base of her spine. The summer air had never felt so soft, so luxuriously warm and gentle; the water of the sad little pond was a cool kiss pressed against each toe, the arches of her feet, the elegant bones of her ankles, the long curve of her calves and thighs. She waded to the deepest part of the pool, water lapping beneath her breasts, hands and arms trailing behind her as she lifted her face to the sky. She opened her eyes to the waning moon, his former fullness carved at the edges as he spun away from the earth. Her stomach twisted into a peculiar conflagration of knots; at further inspection she found that insatiable hunger again, wrought in nebulous shapes and feelings she could not interpret beyond a single, maddening phrase:

 _I want._

Broken from her worship by the persistent, nagging thought, she slapped the surface of the water with both palms and groaned. Despite the fish stew and the four rolls and salad and cake she'd eaten less than an hour before, her belly felt hot and empty, her restless tongue thrust against her teeth _._ She dropped beneath the surface and drew in gulps of water, tasting the smoked-air burn of magic in the brine, a detail she could not remember noticing before. And the fish that evening - if pressed, she was certain she could tell exactly how many days it had been since it was caught, then frozen, then thawed again and tossed into a pot with tomatoes and broth and wine.

She gave up trying to quench her thirst and turned to float on her back in the center of the pond. The tingle in her fingertips and at her scalp spoke of her skin's typical reaction to the moon and the water, but when she lifted a hand to observe she was surprised by the vivid intensity of the phosphorescent gleam. A finger traced along the inside of her elbow left a brilliant trail, and not just in faint blue-white, but blinding cerulean contoured in violet and green. She righted herself, grinning as she drew patterns on her wrists, spirals and flowers and stars twining up her forearms until both arms and legs were more light than flesh. The memory of her own touch lingered long enough to transform into another thought, this one shy and quiet as it tacked itself onto the end of the persistent pair of words rattling through her head.

 _I want someone to touch me._

It was too much. She jerked backwards, feeling as though someone had thrown something dull and heavy against her chest. Her heart took on a frenzied rhythm; she looked over her shoulder to try and catch a glimpse of whatever danger lurked behind the rosebushes. At once the light on her arms and legs began to fade, and the idea slunk away in shame, replaced by implacable hunger and thirst. More stale fish stew, then. Perhaps a bit more of that cake, as soon as she finished singing.

But as she ran through her perfunctory melody, the balanced harmony of the Moon's voice began to overtake her own, lulling her back towards the feeling that her mind tried to stonewall. If she closed her eyes again she could not be entirely sure that her body still existed, even though it hummed with _I want,_ with _desire…_

 _A room - no. Chamber. It smelled damp and cold. Strange black bodies around her. The presence of three distinct desires -_

 _He wanted to break her._

 _He wanted to save her._

 _They wanted to avenge her._

 _A brilliant, hateful green light._

 _And; nothing._

She let out a discordant shriek and flung herself out of the water, struggled onto the artificial shore as she choked and sputtered on her own breath. Her fingers dug blinding divots into the ground, scattering blue dirt-stars. She scrambled to put on her robes and shoved her feet into her slippers, unaware that the odd, high, keening noise was coming from her own throat. It was several minutes before she calmed enough to do more than turn in confused circles, part of her rejecting the disrupted swim, part of her screaming to run from the vision as fast as her damp legs would carry her. When she finally got hold on herself she was almost dry, even without the benefit of the wand she clutched in her left hand.

Away. She had to get away from the moon and the water and the prison of her mind, which insisted on returning to examine the yawning chasm of _emptiness_ that the vision promised. Before she realized what she was doing, she was halfway through the ballroom, unsure how she'd gotten there, making a hard line for the dungeon steps.

The ghost met her at the door.

"Hi," said Iphany. She did not examine the dichotomy of repulsion and the comfort of a presence besides her own; instead she stepped inside the cell and let the ghost's ancillary despair suffocate her thoughts. Her features were whetted with sorrow, phantom tears adding a deceptive brightness to sunken grey eyes. She motioned at the narrow window and drew her hands up to point at her ears, then gestured at Iphany.

"You heard me singing?"

The spectre nodded, then held up two fingers with a quizzical frown.

"Just me," Iphany replied. "It's...hard to explain. The moon sings with me sometimes. I'm a Siren. Daughter of the Moon and the Sea, I guess. And a chap named Icarus Novara. I - have a lot of parents."

Iphany flinched when the spirit gave a silent laugh. After a moment, though, she was able to look past the hollow mouth and see the woman hidden beneath the patina of death; a woman who had been strong and fair. It was easy to forget that real flesh and bone once inhabited the space where only silver shadows remained. She returned the expression with a wary smile of her own.

"I thought I'd try to help you again," Iphany said. "Can you...tell me anything else about yourself?"

A returning solemnity whittled away at the mirth on the ghost's features. She made a motion with her fingers, pressing them to her lips and then pointing at Iphany, then her ears.

"Oh," Iphany replied. "I've actually been practicing that. Let me try."

Brushing the perimeter of the spirit's consciousness was as strange as she remembered; the not-quite-human thoughts composing a funereal dirge. Iphany skimmed the surface of the emotive chorus, concentrating on pushing through _lonely_ and _trapped_ to what lay beneath. Since her strange encounter with the Muggle in the library, she had become aware that there were melodies woven into the fabric of each person's song, and though it was impossible to identify all of them, some rang louder than others. She leaned in to the discomfort, gritted her teeth, strained and stretched this new sense she had found, which was not quite hearing, but something older, a relic of the abandoned connection between the soul and the fragile prison of bones it inhabited.

A single run of notes shot through the din, assembled in a manner that conveyed both indelible love and betrayal:

 _Abraxas,_ the song called itself. _Abraxas, my darling, you destroyed us, my love._

Iphany reeled with the force of the connection, stumbling several steps back as she returned to her own mind with an unpleasant thud.

"Abraxas," she said. "Who is Abraxas?" The named tugged at the corner of her memory, but she could not convince herself she knew where it came from. The ghost was nodding, her pained expression thinned out with something like hope. She held out her left hand and for the first time Iphany noticed the thin metal band encircling her ring finger.

"Your husband?"

The spirit nodded and closed her eyes.

"Did he…" Iphany swallowed something vile in her throat before continuing, "Did he do this to you?"

The ghost shook her head emphatically and advanced, the speed of her approach bringing an icy blast of air. She pointed at Iphany's ears again, imploring.

"I'm sorry," Iphany said. Her body recoiled from the cold and her mind shuttered at the thought of braving the unruly symphony of the spirit's mind again. "It's too much, I can't do it again just yet."

An unearthly wail filled the cell and Iphany could not help shoving her fingers in her ears to block out the sound. The ghost whirled in despondent circles, hands clasped at her belly as though she was trying to stem some deep, invisible wound. Iphany shook her head and backed towards the entrance of the cell, still too sensitive from her swim to handle the broken-glass timbre of the spectre's sobs.

 _Eternity,_ sang the thought under the crying, present in Iphany's mind without her having to reach for it. _Forgotten. My love. My -_

"I have to go," she shouted, fingers still pressed against her ears. "I'll come back when you aren't so-"

She halted a few steps out of the door and turned back to face the unexpected silence. The ghost was no longer crying, and floated in the black heart of the cell, her empty arms crooked and cradled as though she held something, something small and precious, some invisible weight that drew all her focus and softened the pain in her expression to one of awe and devotion.

 _Baby,_ Iphany thought. _She's holding a baby._

 _. . . . . ._

She held the brown bottle in the palm of her hand and lifted her eyes.

"I'm not drinking it until you tell me what it is," Maidne said, her voice rising over the crackle of the fire behind her. She turned the bottle over, searching for a label, and finding none, hazarded a sniff at the cork stopper. Her nose wrinkled and she returned her attention to Lucius, who stood several meters away, his features dim and composed in the relative darkness of the bedroom.

Lucius considered her from this distance, thinking that he could not have found a woman so physically different that the object of this experiment. Maidne was the daughter of a high-blood priestess of Nigeria and a Gringott's doorman, raised first by her mother, who lost title through some ancient family skirmish, sent to stay with her father when life in her native country became too dangerous. She was tall and long limbed, her skin a delicious milky copper, body curved and rounded in places that Lucius had once both desired and claimed. Silhouetted by the fire she was a wild-haired goddess in sapphire robes, carrying herself, as she always did, with the air of someone who knows they are descended from royalty, but longs to prove it to everyone else.

Her suspicion, though warranted, annoyed him. They had kept each other's secrets well enough over a half-decade affair, both well aware the public knowledge of their dalliance would spell trouble on either side. There should have been - if not trust, then understanding.

"If I tell you," he heard himself say, unable to keep the truth from his tongue, "I'm afraid you won't drink it."

She raised a brow and shook her head.

"Then no deal, Malfoy," she replied. "For all I know, this could be anything. Dreamless Sleep, Deathknell, some other vile-"

"I swear," he said, cutting her off before she could accuse him of what he knew she feared; that he conspired with the Lestranges to get her out of the family, to prevent this confusing person of questionable parentage from rising to fill a name she had not earned. Her lips drew tight at the interruption.

"I swear on my own family name that I am not out to harm you," he said. "I need...this. I need you to do it. And you need it, too. I know things about the Lestrange family that will keep them quiet forever, even when the old man passes and they realize all the glory and privilege of his name belongs to you."

"Why now?" She asked, her eyes darkening over the knowledge he held, his refusal to use it after all these years. "What's important enough to risk your relationship with them?"

"My sanity," he grumbled. "Please, Maidne."

It was that word - _please -_ and no other, that caught her attention. Her scowl melted away and she gave a short, sharp nod. Lucius felt his shoulders drop in relief, but tension of a different sort replaced it as she uncorked the bottle, sighed, and tossed the contents back in one grimacing gulp.

"Hey," she said, just before the potion began its work, her eyes shifting to a spot on the wall where the mirror usually hung. In its place was a large square of empty wall, worked in its pattern of emerald and silver stripes. "Where's the m-"

She hiccuped, and winced, and doubled over in discomfort, her long golden-brown arms losing both color and length, bones and skin shrinking around a slighter frame suddenly swallowed by her blue robes. The auburn corona of her curls lengthed, softened to slow, drifting black waves. Lucius stumbled back and caught the bed post with one hand as she finally straightened, and the Siren's eyes met his.

"Polyjuice?" She said, clearly beyond offended. He held a shaking finger to his mouth; the husky voice was wrong, and if he looked too long, the skin and eyes were off as well; correct in color and shape, but lacking the subtle gleam along the edges of her white flesh, green eyes bereft of any unearthly shine. Every time she moved, he detected flashes of the real woman under the artifice, something he'd never seen happen with Polyjuice before. He had expected this, expected some flaw in his plan, given that Polyjuice was designed for human transformation.

But as she moved toward him, her small mouth curled, and the three glasses of Firewhiskey he'd drunk in preparation for this encounter began to perform as expected, the outline of the woman wearing the girl began to bother him less.

She held out her arms and inspected them, then plucked her rings from her fingers, too loose now to stay on properly. She set them on the mantle and ran naked fingers through her hair, unbound and tumbling around her shoulders. Hands resumed their inspection of the unfamiliar features, tripped over narrow shoulders, fingertips tracing the line of collarbone that rose above the ill-fitting plunge of her robes.

"Who am I?" She asked, and it was clear in the expression that she did not expect an answer. "Who could Lucius Malfoy possibly want that he cannot have?"

Lucius sank back on the bed, unable to bear his own weight anymore, a hand still wrapped around the bedpost as though it was the only thing keeping him from collapsing entirely.

"Damn," she said. Her mouth - _whose,_ Lucius thought, blinking through a boozy haze - was all sewn up in a mischievous smile. Having mostly seen a mixture of impertinence and the occasional inappropriate burst of laughter, his entire body bent forward to drink in the expression, magnetized.

"It's better -" he coughed, swallowed, willed his voice to cooperate - "if you don't speak."

"Are we playing that game, then?" She whispered. That was better; though the accent still purred with a time-watered foreign cadence, it was easier to pretend when he was not reminded by every word's failure to carry the tone of some dim golden bell ringing out over a distant hill.

"We...can," he said. _We should._

"Then I am at your service, Master," she replied, and dropped to her knees.

Lucius groaned. He couldn't help it; the sound rumbled deep in his chest and polluted the warm room with terrible weakness.

 _No. That won't do at all,_ he told himself.

"Robes off," he said.-

"Yes, Master."

He nearly tripped over his own bloody boots as he approached her, to hear those words, that delectable compliance.

She hooked her fingers beneath the lacing at the front of her robes, tugging and pulling until it was loose enough to shrug from her shoulders.

His sharp intake of breath distracted her from her own inspection of the borrowed body, one hand splayed across the narrow belly while a pair of fingers traced the small breast beneath now-oversized black lace bra.

"Young," she whispered. There was no small hint of disapproval in her tone. "How young?"

"Legal," he replied, and when she smirked up at him, he could not help but look away. "Barely."

"And is she…"

Lucius froze as the false girl (and how he despised himself for thinking of her this way, _girl,_ while his body wound tight with lust and he had to grip the edges of his cane to keep from reaching out to stop the)

\- snaked her hand down the white belly, beneath the lace underslip, she shifted her thighs apart, hand disappearing to wriggle gently between them. She grinned up at him again with a click of her tongue.

"Naughty Master," she said. "A girl, and a thoroughly untouched one at that. Shame on you."

"Stop," Lucius said. His vision blurred and an unidentified, pounding roar filled his ears. For the very first time in his life, he felt certain he was going to lose consciousness from something other than a spell or a blow. He simply _could not,_ could not process the scene that his senses consumed.

He did not realize he had moved until he heard the shrieking beneath him, and looked down, bit by bit understanding that it was his own hand tangled in the ebony hair, gripped and twisting so hard that the head it was attached to could not hazard a single move in either direction. The Siren's face was pinched in agony, her pink lips parted as the wrong voice spilled out in a cresting scream. He drove her hard to the stone, pinned beneath the weight of his body, and covered her mouth with the other hand.

The eyes, dull imitations that they were, went wide and wild. The girl beneath him bucked and fought, writhed against the weight of his hips in a violent mockery of lust. He dropped himself more completely on her, satisfied to hear the wheezing departure of the breath from her lungs. This was it, then. He would end her with the thing that wanted her, crush the small body, silence the voice that taunted him, destroy her as she sought to destroy and dismantle him, piece by piece -

"You little _bitch,"_ He said, horrified, if from some distance place, to hear the words come out as wretched, painful sobs.

Next he recalled the knocking on the door, first timid, then rapt and insistent, a crescendo of tiny fists banging against the charmed-shut oak. Some internal programming compelled him to release her, barely recognizing that the girl beneath had transformed back into the woman she truly was, that the hair dangling from his fingers was not silky black, but tightly coiled auburn, that the stream of obscenities came in a voice that once again fit the mouth it belonged to.

He rose from the floor, head pounding from a hangover that should not be due for another several hours, crossed the room, and flung open the door to find the girl's house elf cowering at the threshold, her ugly face streaked with tears.

"Blat - is - sorry -" she hiccupped - "But - there - is - something _wrong_ with Mistress Iphany Novara!"

Lucius hazarded a single glance back into the interior of the room, where a dressed Maidne glared back at him in a mixture of black rage and something like desire.

"Warn me next time, you daft idiot!" She hissed, before making a rude gesture with both hands and disappearing into the green flames of the hearth.

. . . . .

"I told you, Blat. I'm _fine,"_ Iphany said. She eyed Lucius from his position at the door, where he stood looking stupidly rumpled and flushed, his eyes holding the memory of a wildness that has not forgotten what it means to be free.

"Then why did this thing come pounding at my door at an ungodly hour, screaming that you were having a fit?"

"It was just a nightmare," Iphany said. She looked back at her tangled bedclothes, shuddering at the memory. The dark beast in her dreams had hold of her by the hair and was crushing the life out of her, snarling and screaming in her ear.

"Mistress - was - could not breathe, looked like - something had - her by the hair," the House Elf whimpered.

"I was thrashing about in my sleep," Iphany replied. That she could not remember falling asleep in the first place made no difference, for there was no other explanation for the vividity of the experience, the true terror she'd felt as her lungs collapsed under that horrible weight, the strength of the hatred and yes, something else, rich and mysterious and intoxicating radiating from the very core of the faceless creature that held her.

Lucius gave a terse nod and kneed the elf back into the room. Iphany considered apologizing, but disliked the shifty, resentful slant of his expression at the moment, and so refrained, moving instead to rub the back of her head, where her scalp throbbed with the memory of the dream.

For some reason, this movement fetched him up and he glared at her, his scowl transforming into recognition, then something like fear. But that couldn't be right, could it? No, it was gone as soon as she looked again, replaced by his usual mask of disdainful, elegant calm. If the mask was a bit loose, a bit stitched together seeming, it was because he was still cross with her for rousing him from whatever it was he'd been doing before appearing at her bedroom door.

 _Not that I care,_ she reminded herself.

"Very well," he said. "Try to educate your elf in the difference between dreams and reality. I dislike being interrupted."

"Oh of course, _Master,"_ she countered. She cocked her head as the word slipped out; she could not recall addressing him in that way before. It left a warmth in her lips that traveled up to her face, making her cheeks throb.

He flinched, and to her surprise he took two steps into her bedroom. To her further surprise, she stood her ground, chin tilted up to meet his eyes.

"You," he said, and snapped his mouth shut. Movement caught her attention, and she glanced down to see his fingers uncurling from a clenched fist. He followed her gaze, and rapt they both watched as his hand drifted towards her, palm curved as though he intended -

 _Do it,_ she thought, both terrified and thrilled by the galloping rhythm of her pulse beating against her throat. He let the hand fall closer to her face, shaped to fit the outline of her cheek, thumb extended and so near to her bottom lip that it she took a breath she was certain it would be enough to bring it in contact with her skin. He smelled like drink and sweat, and fading cloy of a woman's strongly floral perfume.

Belatedly, she answered:

"Me."

He reeled back and turned to the door, paused for several long seconds, in which she found herself wanting to speak, to implore him to either hurry it up and leave her alone, or come back, _please_ -

With that he shut the door, and she heard his footsteps clip briskly down the hall. She stared after him, wondering what in the world had just transpired between them.

 _He looked like he wanted to throttle me,_ she thought. _But more than that, he wanted to touch me._

 _He_ wanted _to touch me._

A shiver struck the nape of her neck and worked its way down the curve of her spine. Why the revelation surprised her made no sense; her father had warned her, in his own detached and euphemistic way, that any man old enough to want would eventually want her. What that meant, he never really said, only that she would never be safe in the wider world.

It was but two years ago that he had changed his tactic, had begun encouraging her to sing, had stopped using such terrifying words as _ruined_ and _violated_ and began to speak of things like _control_ and _ensnare._

 _Is that what I'm doing?_ Perhaps she'd worked some magic on him without realizing it. The hold she had on her abilities was tenuous, she could be using them in a way that even he could not detect, and she could not control.

 _Doubt I could do it without realizing,_ she thought. If so, she should be tired all the time, given how exhausting it was.

The one thing she did know how to do very well, and without much effort, was to tune the melodies inside in a way that changed them from enticing to intimidating. Those were the songs the moon had taught her, when she began to sing again.

 _So why isn't it working on him?_

She settled her mind as best she could and sang a run of notes that to her own ear sounded exactly as they should:

 _You may not look. You are not worthy. You may not touch. You are not enough. You cannot possess me, I am moonlit and tempest-born._

Her true song was nowhere to be found among the forbidding melody. There was nothing there that suggested it was trying to escape, either.

Iphany rubbed the sore spot on the back of her head again and groaned aloud at herself, at the circuitous logic chasing itself around in her head. What did it matter why he had held his naked hand just a breath away from her skin? He knew what she was. He knew what she was meant to do.

 _Just have to be more careful,_ came the thought, followed at once by _why should I?_

The sound of the elf's whining snapped her attention away from the contradiction and she let out a belabored sigh. Blat was busy grinding the heel of one foot into the toes of the other.

"Oh stop that," Iphany said. "It's all right, Blat."

Hunger licked at her belly and she groaned. _How?_

"Go fetch me something to eat," she sighed. "And tell whoever does the grocery shopping here that I want _fresh_ fish for tomorrow, do you hear? No more of this frozen nonsense, I can't stomach it any more."

Blat collected herself, wiped her runny nose on her shift, and vanished.

. . . .

A little past opening time the next morning, the tinkling bells over the door announced the arrival of Gerta's first customer of the day.

"Mornin' there, Yanna," she said, slapping an apron on over her drab gray robes. The smell of cold fish and ocean brine permeated the small shop, which was one part cafe and one part fishmonger, where her Muggle husband brought his daily catch. It had taken some convincing on her behalf to get him to open a second shop in the small Wizarding enclave of Wiltshire, but her assurances had proven correct and there were more than enough magical folk about who were wary of the Muggle-owned businesses in town but more than happy to frequent an establishment run by one of their own.

Another customer slunk in behind the elf and shuffled over to the cafe side, settling himself at a booth. She'd deal with the elf's order first; the Malfoys would hear about it if she failed to see to their needs at any other priority.

"Be right with you, MacAullen," she called, recognizing the man as she caught a flash of unkempt ginger hair.

"Good Morning, Mistress. Yanna would like - that is, if it not too much trouble - the Malfoys request the freshest fish you has, Mistress. Nothing that has been frozen, nothing caught any earlier than this morning."

"Haven't scaled or weighed the morning catch," Greta replied. A frown wrinkled across her brow. "Something wrong with the cod from last week? Did Lady Narcissa complain?"

"No, Mistress. Lady Narcissa is gone." Immediately the elf slapped his hands over his mouth, and shook his head. "That is, she is not - we is having a guest at the house, Mistress Greta, and she is requesting, that is all."

"I'll see what I've got," Greta replied, wanting to pry, but resolving to her better nature with the knowledge that the less she knew about what went on at that ghastly place, the better, so long as they kept paying what they did.

The man at the corner booth tugged at his stringy red hair, snarled soundlessly, and kept listening.


	23. Bound

Bound

. . . . .

Iphany looked from the raspberry scone in her hand and back to the library doors several times before deciding that if he didn't want her to bring food inside, he ought to stop demanding her presence the _moment_ she started eating.

She took an enormous bite and let herself in, making no attempt to minimize the amount of crumbs that fell from the pastry, rather relishing the trail she left behind as she crossed the shelf-lined path to the chairs by the hearth. He sat in one, a pair of silver spectacles balanced on the end of his nose, thumbing silently through a book. On the table next to him rested another weighty looking volume.

"The…" she squinted at the faded gold lettering, "'Imperiatum?"

"Your lesson for today," he answered, not bothering to look up from his own reading. She raked her eyes over his staid, upright position in the chair, the way one gloved hand gripped the edge of his book while the other flipped the pages with a force that did not seem entirely necessary.

"I've heard of this book," she said, "it's all about the Imperius curse, isn't it?"

"Worked that one out from the title, did you?"

She snatched the book off the table hard enough to rattle the teacup and saucer next to it.

"Daddy said all of these were destroyed," she replied. "Destroyed themselves, didn't they? Some kind of failsafe built in by the publisher."

"Copies," Lucius replied. Iphany's eyes widened and she glanced back at the book. Upon opening the first page, she realized that the words were indeed hand-written, not transfigured into typical uniform text.

"How…?"

"Miss Novara, as loathsome as I find Muggles, they have a phrase about curiosity and cats. Have you heard it?"

"Did you steal it? Crib it out of the department of -"

"Clearly," he said, sighing as he closed his own book, "You have not."

"I always rather wanted to meet a cat," she replied as she settled into the opposite chair, tucked her legs up under herself and absently ran a finger down the smooth leather spine of the book. "Most animals don't care much for me. Except for gulls."

Lucius started to reply, but stilled when he saw her brows constrict in a small frown that drew a thin furrow just above the bridge of her nose. Her eyes were dark and staring, searching the shadows of a memory he could not see.

She shook herself out of it a moment later, features swept up in broad, impatient strokes.

"What am I supposed to do with this?" She asked as she lifted the book at dropped in back in her lap with a muffled thud. "I don't know how to do an Imperius curse, and I don't think I can get good enough to fool _anyone_ before term starts."

"You certainly cannot," he replied. She made a half-hearted attempt to scowl, but was obviously self-aware enough to know that he was right.

"So then, what's the point?"

"That book does not deal much in the actual execution of the curse. Any witch or wizard with a modicum of talent can perform it, provided the subject is not inclined to resist. It deals more with the nuances of control - how to manipulate one's target so deftly that he himself would not be able to tell that his will is no longer his own. Most people under Imperius display certain tics or tells that are obvious, once you know to look for them."

 _I ought to know,_ he thought, with a mixture of pride and a whisper of self-loathing. Having read this book many times over, he'd worked a few of those inconsistencies into his own behavior throughout his tenure of service to the Dark Lord during the first Wizarding war.

 _A Malfoy always chooses the winning side,_ came his father's voice, old and cracked and dying, his face a purplish garden of dragon pox. _And makes certain to keep his boat handy, should the tide ever turn._

"Well, that's all fine, but I'm not-"

"Will you, for once, just do as you are told?" He'd done so well, shuttering the memory of the previous night, the failed tryst with Maidne in a Siren suit, the gut-wrenching realization that not only had the Polyjuice behaved unexpectedly, it had gone so far as to create some kind of physical link between the Siren and her understudy. The moments after the elf's interruption were less clear, infused with the unreliable patchiness of a memory soaked in Firewhiskey. He recalled going to her room, he recalled stepping inside, he recalled coming back to himself several moments later, slumped over his knees, panting as though he'd just stepped off the quidditch pitch.

"That's all I've ever done!" She shouted. She shoved the book off her lap, only half-noticing when it did not provide her the satisfying thud she'd been hoping for. Lucius stood with his wand outstretched, glaring icy daggers from over the tops of his glasses as he lifted the floating book and sent it back to rest on the table.

"Iphany, don't sing. Iphany, stay inside, Iphany, don't say that word. Iphany, start singing again, so I can sell you off to some mad old prat bent on world domination. What about me? What about what I want?"

"You keep saying that," Lucius interrupted. "And yet you don't even know what it is."

"I do so," she countered, but as the words fell out he saw her hands come up, belatedly, to cover her mouth. Color bloomed in her cheeks and she hurried away from the argument, went back to the table and thumped the book with the heel of her hand.

"What've you got, just some dank old cellar where you keep a bunch of illegal magical artifacts?"

"Yes," he replied. He wanted to ask her again, to see the silky rose staining her skin, to prove to himself that he had not imagined the embarrassment, the flare of truth in her averted gaze. She gave a hard, cutting chuckle and looked back up at him.

 _Steady,_ he told his twitching hands.

"But not a cellar," he amended. "I have the largest collection of magical artifacts outside of the Ministry."

"Oh, I just bet you do," she said. "I bet you've got Merlin's wand and Arthur's stone and the wood they used to burn the Salem witches."

"Yes, but it's broken, no, because he was a Muggle and I don't deal in Muggle artifacts, and a small vial of ash which has only been opened once to some rather dire consequences."

"Guess you'll be adding that to your inventory," she replied, indicating the silver necklace. The crescent moonstone peeked out of his shirt collar. His fingers drifted absently upward as though he meant to touch it, but instead he set his lips and shook his head.

"I believe this is on loan," he replied. "And besides, unless the world becomes overrun with your kind, it presents very little value from an investment sense."

Lucius watched her slip through the rather predictable emotion of taking offense and land on curiosity again, her eyes darting about the room as she searched for a hidden door or passage.

"Show me," she said. "I want to see."

"What for?"

She glanced back at him, features assembled and still over a pensive, quizzical look.

"Because I want to," she answered. "Isn't that reason enough? I want to see. Show me."

"Wanting something is not a sufficient reason for getting it," he replied. "Besides, you have work to do."

The confused expression dissolved and she regarded him for a moment or two, all traces of emotion or thought tempered by an unreadable veil of concentration. Her gaze was blank, but her lips tapped in silent, rapid recitation. He assumed she was having some sort of fit until she spoke again.

"I'm not touching that book. Not until you show me."

He did not know why his eyes dropped to land on the lilac embroidered hem of her robes; he only knew that the warning glare he meant to give her would do very little good while directed at the carpet. In the periphery of his vision he thought he saw her mouth twitch into a self-satisfied smile.

 _But you may not look,_ came the thought. _You are not worthy._

"Like hell I'm not," he said, surprised to hear the gruff tremble in his voice. He dragged his gaze from the floor and met her eyes. She stumbled back, blinking and shaking her head like a bird at a window, dazed by the unexpected presence of glass.

He took the opportunity to advance on her a step or two, though it was like leaning into a storm wind while being simultaneously shoved forward by an enormous hand at his back. She frowned mirrored his approach by taking two strides of her own.

"Why do you fight it?" She asked. The words clung to the fraying threads of a breath caught in his chest. He shook his head and she let out a sigh that was half a growl.

"I have practiced for years," she continued. "My song doesn't entice. It's meant to repel. Why are you resisting? I thought maybe it was me, that I was mucking it up somehow. But it isn't me, it's you."

"Nonsense," he replied. His legs were beginning to shake. "I have no desire to be enticed by you. My duty is to my Master, and ensuring that you do what is expected of you."

"Then don't look at me like that," she said. His body thrust itself forward another step and the voice that answered her did not match the sneer curling his mouth.

"And how am I looking at you?"

"Just show me your stupid room," she snapped, and in less than an instant had scurried behind her chair, as though it could somehow protect her. As if he could not blast it out of the way with one flick of his wand. But the distance, and the speed with which she moved to get away from him, was enough to unravel the dual desires grappling for control over his disobedient body. The muscles in his legs stopped twitching and his hand drifted away from the hilt of his wand.

"Will you read the bloody book?"

"I _may,"_ She replied.

. . . . . .

The room was small only in comparison to the rest of Malfoy Manor, with a lower pitched ceiling and a single hallway lined with shelves that disappeared into shadow. A pair of eternal torches at the entrance burned in heatless solemnity, silent sentries over the archival treasures within.

"Smells weird," said Iphany as she wrinkled her nose. Unlike the library, scented of ink and parchment and just a hint of the metallic fragrance of magic, this room was thick with the latter, so pervasive that breathing through her nose made her eyes water. Lucius threw her a withering glance and took up one of the torches, then motioned for her to get the other one.

"You have five minutes," he said. "Don't. Touch. Anything."

"I'm not going to," she lied. She snatched up the torch, marveled briefly at the cool flames, then took to the shelves, holding up the light to better see the contents.

Three crystalline globes caught her attention first. She stood on her toes to get a better look and saw that they rested on carved black pedestals with bronze plaques bearing a series of inscriptions. They were each labeled with the Malfoy title and a first name, followed by a date and another unrecognizable name. Her mind clicked over Madame's lessons, eventually recalling the purpose of the spheres.

"Prophecies?" She asked, turning back to Lucius for confirmation. He answered the question by delivering a glare that made her wish she hadn't asked in the first place. Almost.

"I said you could look. I'm not giving you a tour. You have four minutes left," he replied. She turned away with a huff and congratulated herself for not sticking her tongue out.

Moving on, she saw several shelves full of objects that did not appear particularly interesting at first glance - a single scuffed black boot, a pair of spectacles, a rock shaped somewhat like a person's head, a rainbow collection of unlabeled potions that would have been gathering dust if the Malfoys permitted such a thing. Her fingers itched to brush them as she passed, to see if perhaps these relics contained songs of their own, secrets only she could hear. But she didn't dare risk it; she had yet to be swallowed by the darkness beyond the entrance and he was monitoring her every movement with his elegant mouth hewn in a glower.

 _When did I start finding his mouth elegant?_ She wondered, then waved her hand as though she could physically dissolve the thought. Further down in the shelves, a sense of urgency began bubbling in her stomach, a feeling she initially attributed to the imaginary clock ticking down the time in her head. Yet it felt stronger than that, especially when she considered the fact that she had no intention of leaving after only five minutes - that wasn't enough time, honestly. No, this was magnetic, inviolable, and growing stronger with each step she took, so that after another handful of seconds she was no longer scanning the shelves for something interesting to investigate further, but running towards an unknown point in the distance.

When she finally thudded to a halt, the feeling vanished, and her attention fixed on the second shelf from the bottom on her left, where there rested an unassuming instrument that her brain belatedly identified as a fiddle. It was on the smaller side, varnished to a rich orange-brown, and sported various nicks and scrapes along the serpentine curves. She crouched down to observe it more closely, followed the austere line of the neck and strings to the coiled maple scroll at the top. The pegs were worn smooth by time and use. She reached out and tucked a hand under the wooden body, intending -

"Which is it?"

His voice did not startle her; both because she was more used to him emerging from shadows than him approaching her like any other sensible person, and because she was so intent on her inspection that the intrusion felt no more disturbing than swatting away a persistent insect.

"Which is what?" she asked, not bothering to withdraw her hand as she reached with the other to lift the instrument out of its spot on the shelf.

"You're either deaf or an imbecile, I can't decide," he replied. "Put it back, or-"

"What's this old fiddle?" She asked. She'd pulled it out by then and had it balanced across her lap. It was surprisingly lightweight for a thing made entirely of wood.

"That is a Stradivarius violin, it's nearly four hundred years old and worth more than every hair on your pretty head," he replied. "Put it back, girl."

"Stop calling me _girl,_ " she said, though the response held none of the venom it might have deserved. "My name is Iphany. I thought fiddles were Muggle instruments, what've you got this one for?"

"Stradivari was a wizard who left our world to marry a Muggle. A despicable insult, but there's a reason Muggles haven't been able to figure out why his instruments sound better than every other luthiers, despite all the science at their disposal. Put it b-"

"Ooh, a blood traitor," she said. She ran one finger down a string, the movement eliciting the faintest whisper of a note. Her chest tightened at the sound. "So why do you have it?"

"It was procured by my father from an unscrupulous source and has been verified as authentic, and if you don't put it back right now-"

"Abraxas," she whispered. He gave an irritable half nod and indicated the empty space on the shelf. She did not obey, instead she pointed at the small copper plaque affixed to the base of the instrument.

"My Nightingale - you are worth a thousand of these. Abraxas Malfoy," she read aloud. "Your father is Abraxas?"

"I have made my decision," he responded, and snatched the violin from her hands, then eased it back into its position. "You must be an imbecile."

"Oh will you knock it off?" She said, busy pondering the likelihood of her spectral friend in the dungeon being the wife of Lucius' father, or if perhaps, as was the way of old wizarding families there was another Abraxas somewhere in the past. "I didn't hurt anything."

"But you very well could have," He replied. "You also could have gotten yourself cursed, blown up, or unmade. Even I don't know what half of these things are capable of."

"Kind of you to care," she grumbled. "Besides, if it's dangerous you should have it locked up somewhere."

Lucius closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, then gestured at the surrounding walls. Iphany bit back her retort, realizing that anything she said would not be enough to stop him from being entirely correct. She decided not to mention her suspicions about the violin's connection to the ghost in the dungeon, both because she did not want to be admonished for her curiosity and because she felt a kind of kinship with the long-dead spirit. She had her secrets, just like Iphany - and Iphany would keep them. Though there was no one to tell her whether or not the hazy dream she'd had of her mother was real, she did faintly remember a promise being made, even if the words had not been spoken aloud. She had a purpose beyond whatever machinations the men in her life had dreamed up for her, a purpose that simmered and bubbled like a cauldron just before boiling over.

"You have long since spent your five minutes, so I suggest you return to the library while I make certain you did not damage anything beyond repair," Lucius said. Iphany nodded, once again tangled up in her own thoughts. He watched her depart - tried not to watch her depart - and turned his attention to the violin. When the sharp click of her heels faded, he bent down and lifted the instrument off the shelf.

 _Nightingale,_ he thought. _How did I never notice this before?_

 _. . . . ._

 _It was the same every night._

 _At three minutes past eleven o'clock, usually just as his eyes were beginning to close, he heard feet at the door, a hand on the knob. His father, silhouetted by the hallway lamps, standing at the threshold. A beckoning hand, a dour expression. He led Lucius through the labyrinthine maze of corridors, mumbling to himself - words that Lucius could not hear, disjointed phrases, unexpected peals of laughter._

 _Into the secret room they stumbled, Lucius in his pajamas, barefoot, shivering; his father still dressed, his eyes burning with a madness that was wholly absent all other hours of the day. He sat on the stool his father provided, he took the violin in his hands, he stifled his yawns and trained his gaze on the pages of music before him._

" _Mediocre," said Abraxas. His voice was strained, as though he had been crying, but his eyes were hard and bereft of tears. "Again."_

 _Lucius played it again._

 _. . . . ._

He held the violin in his hands, his forehead tensing over the memory of those countless nights. His father never cared if his fingers bled, or if he was ill or tired. Every night that he was home, Lucius played the violin. Upon his matriculation at Hogwarts, his playing suffered, so Abraxas sent him back with another violin to practice with, though it sounded thin and anemic in comparison. He did not want any of his schoolmates to catch him doing something so frivolous, so he'd wandered about the halls until he found a large room with high ceilings and a stool and stand for his music. His father knew when he had not been keeping up with his practicing; it did not matter when Lucius came home with the highest marks in Potions or Charms, it only matter that his healed callouses made his finger-work sloppy. There was no talk of performance, no whisper of _why,_ even when he asked. Even when he refused to play without an explanation, a rebellion that surfaced just once, the punishment too brutal to recollect.

When Abraxas died, Lucius stuck the instrument on the shelf and did not touch it again. The fingers of his left hand bore few reminders of the strange night-time ritual. He doubted he remembered how to play. He did not want to remember how to play.

He picked up the bow anyway.

. . . .

Iphany was a dozen steps into the library when she heard the sound drifting through the open door. She halted, head cocked towards the hallway, her heart clattering in surprise. The note hung alone in the air for a few moments like a question that is not sure it deserves an answer. Then came the response; mellow and round, flowering in a crescendo. She had no name for the thing happening in her chest, but it reminded her of the sensation she'd experienced in the hallway, the thing that dragged her towards the fiddle - _the violin, -_ her mind admonished. She followed the inexorable pull, less interested in knowing why, more concerned with getting closer to the beckoning sound. The door was ajar by a scant centimeter, and when she pulled it open the music darted out in golden spirals, pierced her through the heart and stomach, drew paths of gooseflesh along her arms and neck.

 _So that's what it sounds like,_ she thought, dimly remembering that her father forbade music of any kind, save her nighttime serenade to an audience of no one. Neither Madame or the one before her - Iphany could not remember her name, not _now,_ anyway - ever let out so much as a hum or a whistle, and there were no radios in the house. She had not minded, not really.

 _I should have,_ she thought as she stepped inside. Her shoes were too loud on the marble; she tugged them off to avoid spoiling the rhythm of the song. The walls themselves could not contain it - instead they flung each note back and forth until the next one rose to find acclaim. Lucius stood with his back to her, body bent over his task. She closed her eyes as the bow touched two strings and hooked the notes in harmony. A vision of the moon and the water greeted her, illumined by the moment when two voices emerged in communion and were scattered by the wind among the stars.

His body turned just enough for her to see his fingers flying over the strings as the bow swept across them. His pale hair fell across his face and obscured his features, but she did not need to see them to guess what he was feeling. She knew the emotion well; it was the only thing aside from anger that held any real sway over her apathy. Or had been, anyway. The confusion of the past few weeks made that singular joy all the more precious; it was comfortable and familiar, with none of the complicated attachments that fear and desire had brought her.

So she listened. She accepted the music's invitation - it was penned in soaring measures, composing litanies in her ears. His playing was flawed; she could tell despite having previously only caught bits of music from several kilometers away on windless evenings, which were rare on Shallycob. The hesitation in his technique, the places where fingers doubted their position, the trembling weight of an uncertain vibrato - with every pause she found herself leaning closer, knocked breathless by the humanity shining through the imperfections.

The inquisitive melody emerged in her throat as the bow bounced and trilled over a complex passage. Her voice melted into the arrangement, drew itself back when the string-song swayed in lyrical measure, then piqued across another rising interlude. Again and again the violinist coaxed impossible phrases out of his instrument, moving in time with an internal metronome, oblivious to the world around him, oblivious to the vocal accompaniment - until he receded into a gentle waltz, barely brushing the strings with his bow. Iphany's voice soared above the chords, bright and powerful, suspended in the bittersweet mourning of the song.

He froze, and the last notes perished in a round of echoes. Iphany righted herself and closed her mouth; it was at once so quiet that she heard her teeth clack together.

"I told you to start reading," he said. He would not look at her.

"Where did you learn-"

"Here," he ground out. He shoved the violin back on the shelf and tossed the bow on top. It skittered over the strings with a harsh, tonal clatter.

"Here in this house? Or in this room?"

"Do not sing in front of me again," he said. "Not like that. Not ever."

"I couldn't help it," she replied, angry at herself for sounding so meek and small. "It's the first time I've ever heard real music before. It was…" She searched for the word to describe what she had witnessed, but every possible expression came up lacking. "Could you play it again?"

"No," he said. He began walking towards the entrance, still intent on not meeting her eyes. She hurried to catch up with him, his long stride eating up at least two own her own.

"Was it your mother's violin? Did your father give it to her?"

"Do you ever stop talking?" He reached the door and shoved it open. A warm gust of ink-and-paper scented air breathed out of the larger room and stirred the wisps of hair around Iphany's forehead. She scrubbed her hands over her face and sighed.

"I'm not sure," she replied. "Nobody has ever gotten so cross with me before, I know that much."

"That's because you've only been around your father, house elves, and a couple of servants he hired to teach you. I assure you each of them - perhaps not the elves, but who knows - have found you just as irritating as I do."

"You are such a horrid person," she said. "Do you like anything?"

"On Merlin's grave I swear if you ask me one more question I am going to put you over my knee," he growled. A blush crept into her cheeks and she paused in between a row of bookshelves and the sitting area where her discarded book lay open on the chair. She crossed her arms and leaned against a sturdy oak panel, then raised a brow at him.

"Who is the Nightingale?" _I dare you,_ she might as well have said.

He whirled to face her, and when he advanced she realized he was not wearing gloves anymore, so when he seized her she could feel the heat of his bare hands constricting around her upper arms. The force of his hold toed the line between pain and another darker, unspeakable feeling - one that recognized the hungriness prickling her stomach as something deeper than a desire for food. She compelled him to meet her eyes, and finally he obeyed.

"I hear Merlin rolling over," she whispered, and she felt her mouth curving into half a smile.

He released her, his hands landing on either side of her shoulders to grip the edges of the shelf. His head listed towards the floor, unbound hair falling in sheer gold curtains around his face. Iphany shook her head, rattled herself out of the unspoken spell. She ducked out from under his arm and walked towards her seat in even, trancelike steps.

 _Destroys the men we choose,_ came the plaintive chorus. The memory did not fit, did not make sense in the cold gray light of the situation she'd found herself in. Nor did it belong in this moment, when she was so far from the subject of the phrase.

 _I cannot choose,_ she thought. _I am bound by something I did not create._

 _I will not be bound forever._


	24. Imperiatum

Imperiatum

I have no excuse for how long this has taken me. It's been finished for a long time. If you're still out there, friends, let me know!

. . . . .

Iphany turned the page of the book with a tongue-moistened thumb and blew out a noisy breath. The subject of her annoyance was unperturbed by her opinion; the book lay in her lap, insistent upon remaining as dull as it had for the last three days. She wanted to make a joke about how the author must've been trying to make certain that no-one would be able to utilize his observations because they wouldn't make it past the first page, but there was nobody around to appreciate her cleverness except Blat. Iphany told the elf anyway, but the quip required so much explanation that Blat wound up beating herself around the face with Iphany's boot, bawling about her failure to understand, so she'd given up and given _herself_ a laugh just to get the thought out of her head.

 _At least the food's gotten better,_ she thought, eyeing the graveyard of fish bones on an otherwise empty plate. Blat had done well in that regard; Iphany's request for fresher fare had been seen to the very next evening, when the elf presented her with a platter of perfectly grilled salmon.

 _Still doesn't taste quite right, but it's much closer._

"Any sign of the Lord of the house?" Iphany asked, when Blat appeared to clear her dishes.

"No, Mistress Iphany Novara. But Yanna tells me he has not left again, so Mistress is safe," The elf replied. "Blat can fetch him for you if-"

"For the hundredth time, Blat, _no._ I don't want you to fetch him," Iphany snapped.

"It is seventeen times that Mistress has asked, and so Blat thought-"

"Oh _now_ you're intelligent," Iphany said. "And it hasn't been that many times!"

 _Has it?_

It was funny, really, how she'd spent her entire life, or what of it she could remember, anyway, not caring whether or not there was anyone around her. She'd had Blat for her meals and basic needs, the tutor to break up the monotony of hall-roaming, her father to provide...something, she could not decide what, though it reminded her of the fascination she experienced when she saw gulls overshoot their target and smash into the rock bridge over her cove instead of into the water. He'd always seemed on the same kind of course - blindly hurtling towards an impossible prize, heedless of the fact that he was about to explode into a mess of blood and feathers.

Funny, she supposed, because now she half-stood from her chair at every dishonest creak of the old stone house, confounded by the accelerated tumble of her heartbeat, waiting for a sharp-knuckled knock that never came.

"Blat is so sorry to have upset Mistress," said the elf. "Blat just doesn't want her to be lonely."

"I'm not lonely," Iphany said. "Not even one bit. I'm very bored."

"Blat can fetch another book if Mistress would like?"

"No," she said, and looked down to see that her fingers were gripping the edges of the offending tome, as though Blat had threatened to pry it from her by force. She relaxed her hold and frowned at the incongruous reaction. "He told me to read _this_ one."

"Of course, Mistress," the elf said. She gathered up the remains of Iphany's dinner and vanished.

"Don't patronize me, elf," Iphany grumbled. "Of course, Mistress. What is that supposed to imply? Does she think I am reading this _horrible_ garbage just because he told me to?"

To prove a point, perhaps to the tulips in the vase that were looking _very_ condescending for a bunch of dead flowers, she slammed the book shut and shoved it to the side, but not before marking her place with the ribbon, noting with some satisfaction that she was almost halfway through already. She stared at the black mirror of her window, watching the outline of the pale young woman in the armchair whose broody expression could be detected even without being able to make out her features.

 _Ought to turn in, anyway,_ she thought after glancing at the arms of the somber grandfather clock holding court in the center of the room. It was well past midnight, and with the moon almost new she was in the scatter of days that required a human-like amount of sleep.

But as she lay in bed, watching the stitched dragons on the canopy exhale plumes of textile smoke from their slumbering nostrils, no amount of self-talk could convince her body to relax. She kept replaying the violin song in her head, kept seeing the confusing crinkle at the corners of his eyes as he watched her from his position between the shelves, where he'd stood for a long time before simply walking out of the room without saying another word. She could not shake the feeling that she'd done something wrong, but hadn't the slightest idea what it could have been.

 _On Merlin's grave I swear if you ask me one more question I am going to put you over my knee._

 _Who is the Nightingale? I hear Merlin rolling over._

 _I'm going to put you over my knee._

"I dare you," she said out loud, testing the weight of the words she had not said. Her teeth caught her lower lip and she became at once aware of the warm night air on the parts of her skin not covered up by her night-shift. She had flung all the coverlets and sheets and blasted silky pillows off of the bed, convinced that someone was bothering with the temperature in the room somehow. None of it made any difference, though; she was still warm all the time, even in the cool water of the pond. In fact, it was even worse out there, so much so that she'd taken out her wand and cast a number of charms on the water to make it colder and colder until eventually a skin of ice began to form on the top and she managed to nick herself on one of the frozen shards.

"And I don't need you, either," she told her nightgown, right before dragging it over her head and sending it to join the folded stack of bedclothes in the corner of the room.

She had never been embarrassed by her own nakedness; after all, she spent a sizable portion of her life with only the moon as a raiment. But now she was quite _aware_ of it, as though the absence of clothing implied something beyond the obvious. She looked down at herself, the slope of the breast and the modest valley between her hipbones, a bit less pronounced thanks to her new appetite. Her underwear covered the parts of herself that her nanny had once told her were _private,_ in a serious and flustered tone, the parts that had commenced with an unseemly bit of bloody business once a month not long after she turned thirteen. It was time for that tiresome routine again in a few days, but at least Madame had provided her with the necessary materials for managing both the aches and the mess, if not an explanation _why._ When pressed, the matron had merely looked away and shaken her head, saying that "Mister Novara would rather explain it himself one day."

 _One day never came,_ she thought. _Just told me it was a thing that happened to girls and to do what Madame said and stop bothering him about it._

She hooked a finger beneath the blue lace edge of her underwear and shimmied it down over her legs, then kicked it across the room. She bent her knees and splayed her hands across the tops of her thighs, wondering what it was about what lay between them that was so unspeakable. Madame had told her that all of it meant she was becoming a woman, which seemed odd, considering that as far as Iphany knew she had always been one, unless there were even more secrets her father had yet to divulge.

It was not until she felt the welcome dip in temperature that she realized she was no longer alone; she sat up and glanced towards the still-closed balcony doors, confused by the icy chill of air that had no business belonging to a June evening. In the reflection of the windows she perceived the blue-white shadow, and she whipped her head back in time to see the ghost sliding through her bedroom wall.

"Hey!" Iphany shouted, and scrambled down to grab the sheet. The curiousness of her sudden, inexplicable modesty paled in comparison to the affront of having someone just appearing in her bedroom unannounced, even if that someone no longer counted as a person.

"You could have…" She trailed off. "I dunno, wailed or something. What are you doing in here?"

The ghost extended a finger, her wasted features sharp with accusation. Iphany lowered her eyes and shrugged.

"I've been busy," she said. "Sorry. I didn't forget about you."

 _Forgotten,_ whispered the unearthly voice. Iphany winced and rubbed her temples.

"I guess I'm getting better," she muttered. "I didn't even try that time."

 _Forgotten me,_ the ghost thought-shouted, and Iphany raised the hand that was not occupied with holding together her makeshift dress.

"Hang on," she said. "I saw something in the Malfoy's secret room of things-that-would-definitely-get-them-arrested. A violin, with a plaque on it. To the Nightingale, from Abraxas. Is that you?"

The ghost nodded emphatically, then gestured at the door.

 _Show you,_ she said. _Show you, moon-child._

"I'd better not," Iphany said, but she was already looking for her slippers.

. . . . .

"I _am_ sorry," said Icarus Novara. He slid down from his perch on the edge of the stone window. "I tried to tell you."

"I've got to send her away," Lucius said. He was far less relaxed, both because of the Dementor circling them overhead and the fact that he was casually discussing his near-blinding desire for a teenaged girl with her father.

"You can't," Icarus said. "Sorry, old friend. You're bound on both sides. I can't legally change her guardianship while I'm in here, and our Master will not have you abandoning your duty. He trusts you even more than me, you know." A dark look ran through his eyes, followed by the specter of some yet-consumed pain. He glanced up at the Dementor, his lips moving as if in prayer. After a few moments he looked back at Lucius.

"What about Narcissa? She should be able to bear the worst of the burden, so long as you supervise. There are quite a few things Iphany needs to know that would be somewhat inappropriate coming from you anyway."

"Narcissa is gone," Lucius said, shivering as the black anguish rose up inside him again. It was a thousand times more potent here, augmented by the Dementor's hunger for happiness, their delight in exhuming sorrow. Being away from the girl didn't hurt, either. Icarus' brows shot up.

"Gone where? That won't do, Lucius."

"Gone to the grave, if she's lucky," Lucius replied. His teeth ground together so hard that he heard his jaw creak. "Poisoned your spawn and tried to sell her off."

"Why didn't you tell me?" Icarus closed the distance between them, and before Lucius could react, the other man had grabbed fistfuls of his robes and dragged him forward. He refused to let himself look up at Icarus, who was taller by half a head.

"I sent you an owl," Lucius replied, his voice cool. Icarus scoffed and released him, waving off the Dementor who had begun drifting down towards them, drawn by the sparks of anger.

"You're lucky he spared you," Icarus spat. It was unfair how much Azkaban had sharpened him, where it wore others to the bone and left a dusty lunatic cackling inside a ruined bag of skin. Lucius knew he was lucky to have gotten out when he did.

"Mine is coming, I'm sure," Lucius said with a grimace.

"And worse, if you aren't careful. You'll spoil everything if you ruin her, you know that, don't you? He wants her untouched. That was the agreement. Untouched."

"Ruined is quite an archaic term, isn't it? I never have understood the obsession with virginity. Besides, can Voldemort even-"

"I hope you aren't speaking ill of our master," Icarus hissed. He tore a hand through his hair and mumbled under his breath, his gait faltering as he began to rock back on his heels instead of madness sliding over his features was something Lucius had seen before, and not in the mirror after his own tenure at the prison. He had seen it on his father, night after night, as they made the midnight trek to the secret room.

"What did he promise you?" Lucius asked.

"Voldemort promises nothing," Icarus replied. "Promises nothing."

"Your wife," Lucius said, realizing he knew the answer before he had asked the question. Icarus grew very still. The sound coming out of his mouth reminded Lucius of the wails of the manor ghost.

"Promises nothing," Icarus whispered.

"But you hope," Lucius said. "It fires inside you, even as you give it to the Dementors with both hands. Every time you think you've found the bottom of it, there's more, hiding like moss beneath a rotten limb. Keep turning them over, keep finding it. I understand that hope. I have felt it every night since Narcissa-"

"Narcissa," Icarus replied. His voice was stronger now; Lucius realized that the Dementor had floated down behind Icarus, the skeletal fingers curved over the air above his shoulders.

"You think you know what I feel because of Narcissa?" Icarus barked out a laugh that turned into a cough like old bones rattling inside a hollow gourd. "Days, for you. Years for me. And not for some brittle ice princess who always looks like she's just smelled something rotten. You think what you felt for your wife even compares? Ilia was -"

Icarus' eyes rolled back in his head and he faltered, nearly sinking to his knees. But the Dementor was right behind him, drawing out the poison of the memory. Icarus stood upright again, a mirthless smile peeling his lips back.

"Forgive me," he said. His tone was even and composed. "I do not mean to make light of your suffering. Narcissa was a fine witch, and a good match for you. Her absence will be deeply felt."

"Enough," Lucius snapped. "If I can't be rid of her, what must I do to ensure that she does what is required of her without losing my sanity in the process?"

"That is the issue, I am afraid." Icarus had the good sense to look ashamed, even if Lucius was entirely sure it was a put on. "She knows nothing about men or desire. Surprising, given what she is. I would have assumed it would be in her nature, but I suppose I was too thorough in sheltering her from the truth."

"How much is nothing?" Now it was Lucius' turn to be appalled. He knew she was an innocent - but Icarus seemed to be suggesting -

"Yes, it's as bad as all that," Icarus replied, likely reacting to the uncontrolled horror Lucius felt spreading across his face. "She's had her blood, I know that much. But I was not prepared to discuss these matters with her, at least not until absolutely necessary. I wanted to make sure she knew enough not to do it by accident-"

"You can't have sex by _accident-"_

"You'd be surprised," Icarus said mildly. "Once Voldemort knew she was unspoiled, he wanted to keep it that way. I was to place a Castitus on her before her matriculation at Hogwarts. You can be responsible for that now, I suppose."

"You know why he wants that," Lucius said. "And you'd have done it anyway." The Castitus hex was a near-abandoned tradition of the ancient days of pureblood fervor, meant to deter any pre-marital dalliance. It caused unspeakable torment on its victims should they attempt so much as a chaste kiss with anyone other than their intended partner. Icarus looked puzzled, going so far as to cock his head like a quizzical dog.

"Of course," He replied.

"He's going to absolutely destroy her," Lucius said, unsure why the corners of his vision were blurred with red, why his ribs felt too small for the viscera beneath them. "You know that, don't you? He will consider her a subhuman half-breed and her beauty, her innocence will enrage him. She'll be lucky if the _worst_ he does is rape her. She's your daughter, for Merlin's sake, doesn't that mean anything to you?"

Icarus dismissed the notion with a wave of his hand.

"She's never belonged to me. Ilia once said that all Sirens are children of the moon and sea. I thought she was being romantic at the time, but have you taken a look at my daughter? She's about as human as my friend up there."

"Right," said Lucius. "Human or not, you have no qualms about her eventual fate."

"None," said Icarus, in a voice to high and hard to be believed. He covered it up with a smirk and folded his arms across his chest. "It appears you do."

"I do not generally celebrate the suffering of children," Lucius replied.

"Perhaps not, but it seems you'd gladly fuck mine if you could."

. . . .

 _If I'd had my wand,_ Lucius wondered later as he passed the glowing red tip over his bruised knuckles, _Would I still have punched him?_

 _Yes,_ he decided, as he slid it back into the cane. _I would have._

It was an hour or two before dawn by the time he returned to the manor. His wand now bore a brand near the bottom hand-grip, too small to be seen with the naked eye, thankfully, but marking him as prohibited from ever visiting an inmate of Azkaban again. All for the best. He was not certain that he would be able to prevent himself from beating the other man senseless, should their paths cross again.

He thought of Draco, all smirks and bravado, hiding the childlike fear beneath the facade. He thought of turning him over to the Dark Lord to do with as he pleased. He thought of how proud Draco would be, his anxiety hidden by a desire to prove himself worthy of the honor. He thought of the horror he would see in his son's eyes when he realized what was about to happen to him.

 _She has no idea,_ Lucius realized, though it was an understanding that had been at the back of his mind since the moment he'd seen her. Everything about her - unsettling bits and all - radiated purity. At first he'd assumed it a Faery ploy, designed to draw and ensnare before claiming its victim. But in the few interactions they'd had, he began to understand that the emptiness behind her brilliant eyes was twofold - there was something missing inside her, some essential spark of spirit - and there was simply innocence. She took it all in stride, though there had been moments when the veil lifted and he caught a glimpse of the unspoken storms beneath whatever strange enchantment kept her from being fully tethered to the real world.

He shook himself, exhausted by his inability to maintain a single thread of thought without it unraveling into obsession.

 _That lasted all of twenty seconds,_ he thought, already missing the crowding desolation of Azkaban. He was starting to understand why Icarus liked it there so much.

 _Sleep,_ whispered his mind. _Sleep and deal with it tom-_

"Hey! Mister Malfoy! You have to come with me _right now!"_

Iphany exploded into the library in a white silk nightgown, and Lucius' shoulders dropped in defeat.

"Where are your clothes?"

He meant to sound harsh and demanding, but his voice decided to do him the favor of grating out in an exhausted groan.

 _Just don't look at her,_ he told himself, as his eyes dragged themselves from the tops of her white shoulders to the pink slippers on her feet.

"It's night-time, why would I be wearing clothes? You have to come down to the dungeon, there's something you have to see!"

"There is nothing in the dungeon that I need to see at -" He glanced at the clock holding court over the mantle to give himself something else to look at - "Five o'clock in the morning. Whatever it is can wait."

"I'm telling you it can't!" She insisted. "She needs to see you!"

"Who needs to see me?"

"The Nightingale!"

Lucius clenched his fists and she was suddenly aware, in a way she could not remember being before, that he met her eyes with a kind of unstable defiance, that his annoyance was not with her, but himself. She recalled her first night in the manor, when he had caught her rummaging through his books and thrown her out into the hall. The memory made her take a step back.

"Put this on," he said, his fingers plucking at the ornate fastenings of his surcoat. He wore a crisp white shirt beneath, buttoned up and tucked into tailored gray trousers. Without his robes and outer vestments, he looked much less the regal Lord of the Manor, and much more like a tired, ordinary man. Oddly, she thought of the gull Narcissa had killed, the scrape of pity that scored her chest as she'd watched the lifeless bird land in a feathered heap on the floor.

 _I feel bad for him,_ she thought. _He looks worn out._

She took the proffered garment and shrugged it on. The sleeves dangled past her wrists and it hit her behind the knees instead of at the waist, not to mention the fact that it was bloody _hot._

She dragged her hair out of the collar, still grumbling. With every movement the silk interior of the coat rubbed a frictionless warmth into her skin. It carried with it a deep, prickly scent, one she caught here and there as she adjusted the garment, until finally she succumbed to her curiosity and lifted a fistful of of fabric to her face and breathed in the elusive cedar-spice.

"Oh it's you," said. Her face felt warm. "I meant — what?"

Lucius frowned. "What?"

"Did you — sorry. I thought — never mind. Will you follow me?"

"I don't think I have a choice," she heard him mutter as he stepped away from the fireplace.

. . . . . .

Torn between irritation and concern, Otilde lay a hand on Alba's back as she retched into the shallow water of the stream.

"Something...wrong with the water…" Alba coughed, before doubling over to wrap her arms around her midsection. Rumors of violet and rose filtered through the canopy of trees _._ They had spent the night in flight, high enough to ensure they would not be seen, low enough to follow the progression of the single reliable source of water.

"It's freshwater now," Otilde explained. "We're not used to it."

"It's not that," Alba replied. Her eyes were closed and her breath rasped in alarming striations. When Otilde looked closer, she could see black webs pulsing where her sister's veins should have been.

"Breathe," she said, unaware that the hand on her sister's back had begun to tremble. "You're all right."

"It tastes dead," Alba said. "Poisoned. Sick." She rocked back on her heels and buried her face in her hands. Otilde bent down and smelled the harmless-looking water trickling over the mossy stones. She shot back up with a stunned gasp. The acidic, burnt-oil smell hit her like a soft, wet slap.

"Home," Alba was whimpering into her hands. "Tilly, I have to go home."

"You'll be alright," Otilde replied. "You'll-"

Alba's hands parted and Otilde stumbled back. Her sister's eyes had gone entirely black, from the whites to the pupils, and whatever it was that leached the color was now trickling out from the corners like tears.

"Alba-" Otilde lodged her arms under Alba's and heaved, trying to drag her away from the stream, away from the stench now wafting over them like a dense evening fog. She managed to make it into the burgeoning shade of an oak tree, where dawn had begun to paint the forest floor with the shadowed outline of its branches. Alba's eyes fluttered closed as Otilde arranged her so that her back rested against the smooth bark of the tree. Her half-feathered legs were drawn up to her chest, and her shoulders rose and fell with the rapid labor of her breath.

"You're going to be fine," Otilde said. She extended a hand and smoothed away the silver-blue curl wilting against the damp heat of Alba's brow. "You stay here. I'm going to find out what's poisoning the water so I can fix you up."

"Yes," said Alba. A faint smile nudged one corner of her mouth. "And then, home."

"Stay here," Otilde reminded her, though she doubted Alba had the strength to disobey.

She took three long steps and then launched herself into the air. As her black wings tore through the canopy, a single ebon feather drifted down to land in Alba's outstretched, unmoving hand.

. . . .

Lucius peered into the heart of the dungeon cell and scowled.

"You brought me down here at this unholy hour to talk to the damned ghost? It doesn't have anything to say, it just wails and frightens the house elves."

"She," said Iphany. "And she can so talk — well, to me, anyway. Don't you recognize her?"

"Insomuch as I've seen her mooning about the hall of portraits outside my bedroom door," Lucius replied. "I assume she was a Malfoy wife or daughter at some point."

"Not at some point," the girl said. She looked catlike in her self-satisfaction. "To My Nightingale— All my love, Abraxas."

"This…" Lucius shook his head. Something sharp and cold began to take root in his stomach. "This is the nightingale?"

"Not just the Nightingale," Iphany said. "Can I show him?"

Lucius let himself peer up at the silvery figure, the long, straight nose, the pale eyes which — had he not noticed before? All the times he'd felt the chill of her presence upon stepping outside his bedroom door, to which she would react by emitting the hair-raising moan before disappearing back down the steps —

But Iphany was moving past her, to a section of the crumbling corner of the cell, where she reached inside a sizable gap in the stone to withdraw a length of rotting fabric that was covered in dark, streaky stains.

"She was a muggle," Iphany said. "She birthed a son in this room. Your grandfather took him. When she would not stop screaming for him, they cut her tongue out. When that didn't work, they put her to sleep, took her milk to feed the child. Kept her alive, barely, for almost a year. Then one day she woke up. They stopped giving her the dreamless sleep potion the same time they stopped feeding her. She lasted a month on hope. And then…"

Iphany swallowed hard. Her eyes flickered to the spectre.

"Eventually someone came and...dealt with what was left of her. She hid her spirit from them until they were all dead, too, but she stayed to watch her son grow up. They told him, when he asked, that his mother was a pureblood — that she died not long after he was born."

"I don't understand why you're telling me this," Lucius whispered. He held up his hands and began to back away, his ears ringing with a soft-high-pitched whine. The ghost was crying, as usual, but this time her tears were silent, her mouth trembling on the edge of a sad, shattered smile.

"Yes you do," Iphany said. "Your father — he didn't know. They gave him potions that made him forget her, filled his mind with false memories—"

"You stop it," Lucius warned. "You—"

"You know who she is," Iphany said. Her bright and lyrical voice was uncharacteristically subdued, gentle. They both looked down is surprise to find that she had laid a hand on his arm.

"Call her by her name," she said. "Just once, and I think...I think she will be free."

"I don't know her," Lucius replied, but by the way the girl pressed her lips together, her eyes edged with — was it pity? Understanding? Either way, she knew what he meant.

"Just say it."

"You are — you — you were my…" Lucius felt the cold thing crawl from his insides to spread through his chest, into both shoulders, down his arms — one, in particular, more than the other, and he knew there was something about that feeling he was supposed to heed, but he couldn't recall what it was just now. He met the spirit's eyes and knew, then, that they were his own.

"Mother," he said.

In the span of a heartbeat, something happened to the — to her. To his mother. _Mother._ The word felt as foreign as a language he had never heard before. Her face filled out, no longer gaunt and wasted, and the sorrowful emptiness fell away from her features. She smiled, an expression sculpted out of the raw bones of a long-awaited rest.

"My son," she said, aloud. Iphany gasped, but Lucius hardly heard her; he was fixated on the cool wind of a hand curved around his cheek. He shivered, and his mother smiled again, and then she was gone.

"Your arm," the girl was saying. He supposed she'd been saying it for quite a while before he noticed.

"What?"

"Something is wrong with your arm,"

He looked down at his left forearm, which trembled violently, as though he were having a peculiar sort of fit. Finally the feeling he'd thought was merely spreading dread crashed into focus. As he rolled up his sleeve, already knowing what he would find there, all he could manage was a stiff and hollow laugh.


End file.
